In plain English
If your store has videos with sound, product demos, brand stories, tutorials, people who are deaf or hard of hearing need the words as text. That is what captions are: the dialogue and important sounds, shown on the video in time with what is happening.
Captions also help the roughly everyone who watches videos on mute (in bed, at work, on a train), so they are good for conversion too, not just compliance.
Who this is for
- Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers, who rely on captions to follow the video.
- Anyone watching with the sound off, which is most people, most of the time.
- Non-native speakers, who read along to catch what they miss.
How to check and fix it yourself
For each video with audio, turn the sound off and try to follow it. If you cannot, it needs captions. Options:
- On YouTube or Vimeo, upload a caption file or use auto-captions and then edit them for accuracy.
- For self-hosted HTML5 video, add a captions track:
<video controls>
<source src="demo.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<track kind="captions" src="demo.en.vtt" srclang="en" label="English" default>
</video>Where we can help
We flag every video on your store that is missing captions (or has sloppy auto-captions), and point you to the quickest way to add accurate ones. It pairs with our guide on video captions and ADA compliance.