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Re: Film (movie) captions

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From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Nov 3, 2015 12:58PM

> I'm wondering if feature films and film excerpts are treated any differently.

To my knowledge WCAG does not discriminate between features and clips or excerpts -- they all must provide synchronized captions and audio descriptions under Level AA. Other US laws such as CVAA have different requirements for clips -- for example clips are now required to be captioned but only when posted by the video owner.

> What would the recommendation be for a feature film, or excerpt of a feature film. Would one use the script as the transcript if available? Should a script not exists are descriptive captions sufficient?

Many tools such as YouTube allow you to upload a transcript or script as the basis for creating captions. This seems like a good place to start that could save time.

> Another question with regards to film is the use of closed captioning and subtitles, can these coexist in the caption file?

My understanding is that you would have separate tracks/WebVTT files, one or more for captions in different languages, and others for subtitles.

Jonathan

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Jonathan Avila
Chief Accessibility Officer
SSB BART Group
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-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Byron Croes-Lacroix
Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2015 2:39 PM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: [WebAIM] Film (movie) captions

Hello WebAIM community,

I have a question which pertains to movies and their captions and transcript requirements. I will be performing an accessibility check on numerous videos and while I'm aware of some requirements and best practices, I'm wondering if feature films and film excerpts are treated any differently.

What would the recommendation be for a feature film, or excerpt of a feature film. Would one use the script as the transcript if available? Should a script not exists are descriptive captions sufficient?

Another question with regards to film is the use of closed captioning and subtitles, can these coexist in the caption file?

I would appreciate any advice and input.

Thank you kindly,
Byron