Our Captioning Services exceed the Australian government’s required standard – wcag 2.1.
We guarantee that your captions will capture all dialogue (and important sounds) and are visible.
WCAG 2.1 Caption Standard.
Although captions are detailed as part of the WCAG, the standard itself uses broad terms to define what would be seen as a good quality caption – defining a quality caption as text that is visible and that captures all dialogue and important sounds.
“Check that captions (of all dialogue and important sounds) are visible”
– WCAG 2.1 Success Criteria.
Visibility Guarantee.
- Our caption technicians will select caption colour and fonts that will ensure the legibility of the captions.
- Our caption technicians will ensure caption lines end at natural breaks and reflect natural flow and punctuation. Each caption will form an understandable segment.
- Our caption technicians will ensure the punctuation of captions have been used to reflect the way speech is delivered
- Our caption technicians will ensure caption positioning will not obscure on-screen text or any part of a speaker’s face or other important visuals where possible.
- Our caption technicians will ensure captions are no more than three lines in length.
Accuracy Guarantee (capturing all dialogue and other important sounds) .
- Our caption technicians will ensure spoken content has been captioned.
- Our caption technicians will seek to ensure captions are verbatim. If verbatim is not possible, the captions will reflect the meaning of the spoken content.
- Our caption technicians will take into account the intended audience when captioning and if verbatim captioning is desirable. Especially content that is created for children.
- Our caption technicians will ensure the manner and tone of voice of speakers has been conveyed, where practical and material.
- Our caption technicians will ensure sound effects and/or music, that is key to understanding the program and not observable from the visual action, have been accurately described.
Comprehensibility Guarantee (exceeding WCAG 2.0)
Just as communicating speech goes beyond just being ‘audible’, we move the needle on WCAG 2.0 captions to include factors that lead to clearer, more understandable captions. After all, isn’t that the point? Communicating in a way that people understand. We seek to include with our captions a number of factors that are commonly seen as leading to more effective caption comprehension.
- captions identify individual speakers, both off-screen and off-camera.
- captions are displayed to viewers for long enough to enable viewers to read the captions.
- timing of the caption coincides with the onset of speech of the corresponding speaker, sound effect or music.
- disappearance of captions coincides with the end of the speech of the corresponding speaker, sound effect or music.
- captions have been correctly spelled.
- explanatory captions are provided during long pauses.
- control the extent to which the appearance or disappearance of a caption coincides with the relevant shot or scene change.