The purpose of this document is to describe how to work with closed captions for accessibility with video playback. As part of maintaining compliance with the WCAG 2.1 accessibility rules, the platform offers the 2 levels of closed caption support: manual and automated.
Automated closed captions
By default whenever a video is uploaded to the platform, it is automatically processed by our AI closed caption generation system, which extracts and identifies spoken language. The AI system will identify the correct language used in the video and generate the appropriate closed caption file. The system also generates a transcript, which can be used for SEO purposes. Both file and transcript are found in the platform on each video details screen.
Manual closed captions
For any video asset, you can manually manage closed captions, as desired. This includes the addition & removal of closed caption files, as well as enabling up to 30 different languages per video.
Uploading closed caption files is simple, from the video details screen simply click “ADD CAPTION”.
A dialog opens that allows you to choose a language, set the caption file as default and select or drag your caption file. Caption files can be in 2 formats, SRT or VTT. Our video player natively leverages the VTT format, however you can upload SRT files and the platform will convert them for you automatically.
If you are uploading your own files, please ensure correct formatting of the file. You can compare your files to our sample files if you encounter any issues.
Sample VTT File Sample SRT File
Once you have made your selection, click “SAVE”. The system will ingest your caption file and you will see it listed in the Closed Captions section.
You can download the caption file for reference, remove it or add more caption files, as needed.
The following languages are supported:
- Arabic
- Catalan
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- English
- Finnish
- French
- German
- Greek
- Hebrew
- Hindi
- Hungarian
- Icelandic
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Malay
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Punjabi
- Romainian
- Serbian
- Spanish
- Swedish
- Thai
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
- Vietnamese
The video player will automatically ingest and understand the closed captions out of the box. Nothing further is required. If you wish to utilize your own player, you can access the closed caption files using the provided metadata from our API.
Inside one of the items in the Channel API response, you can use the following object:
[].asset.cc[0].src
The entire caption object looks like this:
The object enables you to leverage the closed caption files within any experience on your site.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact support@creatable.io and we’ll be happy to help.