The How and Why of Captioning Videos on Social Media
This post comes to us from volunteer Mary Kate Ashe who has a BA in Deaf Studies & American Sign Language and is currently studying for her Masters in Early Childhood Inclusive Education.
Orange background with Instagram app open and large text in the middle stating “Caption your social media”
Now that such a large percentage of our lives are lived through social media it has become more important than ever to provide captioning on the content we post. When we post videos without captions we are leaving out so many people who could be receiving or contributing to our message. For example, those who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing, experience difficulties with auditory processing or are sound sensitive don’t have access to uncaptioned content. Studies show that videos with captions have longer view time and allow viewers to stay engaged for longer.
Adding captions to videos may seem daunting and time consuming but there are many ways to simplify the process. The easiest that I have found for captioning social media videos is by recording with a captioning app. These apps will automatically caption your speech as you record the video. They then give the option to review and edit any captioning mistakes which is a crucial step. This means you do not have to type out every word of your video and time it with your words. The app does the work for you!
Captions for TikTok is my favorite to use for this. It was developed for TikTok but is compatible with many social media apps. It is free and so intuitive to use. You record just like you would on the Instagram or TikTok camera. It will even allow you to start and stop recording without restarting the whole video! Other apps that are similar are MixCaptions, Clipomatic and Caption This. If you are using an Android device the app Autocap is most compatible. These apps vary in cost and what extra features they offer but all of them have auto captioning.
Apple Clips is still relatively new but very fun to play with if you are using Apple products! It gives more artsy options and is compatible with iMovie as well as all of the social media apps. This is great for longer content you may be posting to Facebook or YouTube. In Apple Clips you also give you have the option to give captions an artistic flare.
It is so important that we regularly include captions in our social media use. People find connections and community through social media. Not providing captions on our content limits connections to those who use sound as a main form of receiving verbal information. Reaching past that boundary is a great step towards more inclusive and equitable communication.