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Video Accessibility Guide

A guide to making video tutorials accessible for users with diverse needs.

Closed Captioning Best Practices

Best Practices for Captioning Video Content

  • Captioning should follow four basic guidelines:
    • Captions should be accurate.
    • Captions should keep the meaning and intent of the content.
    • Captions should be presented consistently throughout the video.
    • Captions should be clear and complete (Canadian Association of Broadcasters, 2008).
  • The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (2008) has a complete captioning guide:
    • https://www.cab-acr.ca/english/social/captioning/captioning.pdf
    • Key Sections:
      • False Starts and Utterances (p. 10)
      • Spelling (p. 11)
      • Punctuation (p. 13)
      • Numbers (p. 15)
    • If your video contains instrumental music provide a description of the music in square brackets.
      • Eg: [classical string music]
    • If your video contains music with lyrics, caption the lyrics with a music note at the start of the caption
      • Eg: ♪ There’s a starman waiting in the sky ♪