A program has closed captioning if the text does not normally appear on the broadcast. The viewer will have to manually activate the captions in order for them to appear. For example, most Hollywood movies on DVD, Blu-Ray, or streaming services have closed captioning.

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- Closed Captioning
- Open Captioning
- Automated Captioning

Types of Captioning

Ellcessor, E. (2011). Captions On, Off, on TV, Online: Accessibility and Search Engine Optimization in Online Closed Captioning. Television & New Media, 13(4), 329–352. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476411425251

Captions On, Off, on TV, Online: Accessibility and Search Engine Optimization in Online Closed Captioning

A program has open captioning if the text always appears on the broadcast, without any way to turn it off. For example, silent movies can be considered to have open captions, as the intertitles contain text that help to tell the film's story.

Open Captioning

Closed Captioning

A program has automated captioning, or Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), if the text is generated by a speech recognition or translation program instead of a person. This is often used on social media websites, such as YouTube and Facebook, due to the vast amount of visual content on these websites. 

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