Captions make video usable without sound, which serves people who are deaf or hard of hearing and the much larger group watching in a quiet office, a noisy van, or on a phone in public. A transcript adds something neither provides: text on the page that can be read quickly, searched, and indexed.
Who this actually serves
The accessibility case is straightforward and it understates the audience considerably.
A substantial share of video on the web is watched with the sound off, by choice. Someone in an office, on public transport, in a waiting room, or beside a sleeping child. Without captions the video is silent and largely useless to all of them, and none of them will turn the sound on.
So captions are an accessibility requirement and a practical one, which is a recurring pattern where the accessible version turns out to be the more effective version generally.
The three things, and what each does
| Item | What it provides |
|---|---|
| Captions | Synchronised text of speech and relevant sound, shown during playback |
| Transcript | The full text as a document or on the page, readable without watching |
| Audio description | Narration of important visual information for people who cannot see it |
For a small business, captions and a transcript cover almost all of the practical benefit. Audio description matters where the video shows something essential that is never spoken aloud, which for most business video is avoidable by describing it in the narration instead.
Automatic captions, honestly assessed
Every major platform generates them automatically and they have improved considerably.
They still fail on the words that matter most to a trades business: product names, brand names, technical terms, place names, and anything spoken over background noise. A caption reading "we replaced the sofa board" instead of "soffit board" is worse than no caption, because it is confidently wrong.
The workable approach is to generate automatically and then correct. Editing a machine transcript takes a fraction of the time of writing one, and the corrections are concentrated in exactly the terms that matter for your subject.
Budget roughly the length of the video again for correcting a five-minute piece, which is a reasonable cost for content that will sit on a page for years.
Why the transcript is the underrated one
It does something the video cannot: it lets someone get the content without watching.
Plenty of people would rather read four hundred words than watch a three-minute video, particularly when scanning for one specific answer. A transcript on the page serves them, and it takes seconds to scan against three minutes to watch.
It also puts the content into text on your page, which is what search engines and AI systems can actually read. A video with no transcript is a large file conveying nothing to anything that cannot watch it. The same content as text is indexable and quotable.
For a business that has gone to the trouble of making video, that is a substantial amount of value left on the table by not publishing the words.
Doing it properly
- Correct the automatic captions rather than accepting or rejecting them entirely.
- Include the speaker where more than one person talks, so the reader can follow.
- Note relevant non-speech sound where it carries meaning, which for business video is rare.
- Put the transcript on the page, not in a downloadable file, which is a step most people will not take.
- Format it as readable text with paragraphs rather than a wall, since it is being read as much as referenced.
- Do not autoplay with sound, which browsers largely prevent anyway and which is the behaviour that made captions necessary.
Burned-in versus proper captions
Text baked permanently into the video picture is common on social platforms and it is the weaker option for a website.
It cannot be turned off, cannot be resized, cannot be read by assistive software, and is not text as far as anything reading the page is concerned. Proper caption files can be toggled, styled by the viewer, and read by software.
Where video is being repurposed from social, it is worth producing a version with a caption file rather than reusing the burned-in one.
The proportionate view
If you publish one video a year, captioning it properly is an afternoon and worth doing. If video is central to how you market, this becomes part of the production process rather than an afterthought.
Either way the cost is small relative to making the video in the first place, and skipping it means a portion of the audience gets nothing from something you already paid to produce, which is the same argument that runs through why accessibility is a business issue.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need captions on business videos?
Yes, and the audience is larger than the accessibility case suggests. A substantial share of web video is watched with sound off by choice, and without captions those viewers get nothing.
Are automatic captions good enough?
As a first draft. They fail on product names, technical terms, and place names, which are exactly the words that matter for a trades business. Generate automatically and then correct.
What is the difference between captions and a transcript?
Captions are synchronised text shown during playback. A transcript is the full text on the page, readable without watching and indexable by search engines.
Why does a transcript matter for search?
A video with no transcript conveys nothing to anything that cannot watch it. The same content as text on the page is readable, indexable, and quotable in AI answers.
Should captions be burned into the video?
Not for a website. Burned-in text cannot be toggled, resized, or read by assistive software, and it is not text as far as anything reading the page is concerned.
How long does captioning take?
Roughly the length of the video again to correct an automatic transcript for a short piece. That is a reasonable cost for something that will sit on a page for years.
West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.
Video on your site with no captions or transcript?
We caption it properly and publish the transcript, so the content works for people watching silently and for anything reading the page.
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