CAPTIONING

Captioning is a great way for D/deaf or hard of hearing audiences to engage with your show if they are not Auslan users. There are a few ways to do this.

Closed captioning is the most common form of captioning and can be activated and deactivated by the viewer. Unlike subtitles, captions include descriptions of non-dialogue audio like “music” or “sighs”. You can see examples of closed captioning on Facebook or YouTube, activated by pressing the ‘CC’ symbol within the video. Closed captioning can be presented on a screen next to a live performance, or onscreen for film works.

Open captioning is permanently embedded and is in view for for the duration of a show, film, or livestream. In live theatre, open captioning can be projected to a screen behind the artists onstage or on screens on either side of the stage.

Live events are best captioned manually by an operator in real time. Subtitles are another example in musical settings.