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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Closed captioning (CC) allows deaf and hard of hearing / hearing-impaired people, people learning a new language, people first learning how to read, people in a noisy environment, and others to read a transcript or dialogue of the audio portion of a video, film, or other presentation. As the video plays, text captions are displayed that transcribe, although not always verbatim, what is said and by whom and indicate other relevant sounds.

The term "closed" in closed captioning means that not all viewers see the captions—only those who decode or activate them. This is distinguished from "open captions," where the captions are visible to all viewers. Open captions are sometimes referred to as "in-vision" in the UK. Captions that are permanently visible in a video, film, or other medium are called "burned-in" captions.

In the US and Canada, "captions" are distinguished from "subtitles". In these countries, "subtitles" assume the viewer can hear but cannot understand the language, so they only translate dialogue and some onscreen text. "Captions" aim to describe all significant audio content, as well as "non-speech information," such as the identity of speakers and their manner of speaking; sometimes music or sound effects are also described using words or symbols within the closed caption. The distinction between subtitles and closed captions is not always made in the United Kingdom and Ireland, where the term "subtitles" is a general term.

It has been suggested that the largest audience of closed captioning are now in fact hearing people in 'English Second-language' (ESL) communities. In the US, the National Captioning Institute noted that ESL learners were the largest group buying decoders in the late 1980s and early 1990s (before built-in decoders became a standard feature of U.S. television sets) .In the UK of the 7.5 million people who use TV subtitles (closed Captioning), six million have no hearing impairment at all.