Every website must be ADA-accessible. And, if a particular website is not ADA web-accessible, it can be subject to ADA claims or even a lawsuit directed at its lack of ADA web accessibility features.
Going over the differences between open captions and closed captions while speaking with an ADA compliance lawyer will allow you to protect your website from ADA-related claims/lawsuits.
What Are Open Captions?
Open captions are captions that are burned into a video.
Just as an example, if you open a video and every time someone speaks, there are subtitles, then that video offers captions. If those captions can’t be turned off or adjusted in any manner, then they are open captions.
Many people like open captions since they ensure that anyone who can’t hear them will have easy access to captions that they can use to understand the video.
On its own, this is a very valid reason to prefer, and employ, open captions. And yet, open captions offer a number of ADA web accessibility issues that must be considered.
What Are Closed Captions?
Closed captions are captions that can be turned on and off.
If a user wants to turn on the captions your video offers so that they can understand what is being communicated, then they can do so with the press of a button. However, if they want to turn off those captions, they can do that, too.
Unlike open captions, closed captions are contained within a separate file. This file can be activated with the press of a button, or it can be turned off. This is true only if the video player you are using supports a particular subtitle file.
What Is Better For ADA Web Accessibility: Open Captions Or Closed Captions?
The answer to the question outlined above is “closed captions.”
Open captions offer a number of benefits, such as the fact that they are embedded into a video, ensuring that there will never be any compatibility issues regarding a video player and the subtitle file.
Despite the above, though, open captions offer a number of problems. And, the most notable of these problems is as follows: assistive technologies can rarely access open captions, as a result of them being embedded into a video.
The above means that those who rely on assistive technologies will not be able to access the content within your video unless they actually look at the video and read the captions.
Outside of the above, closed captions often support multiple languages and can be adjusted to suit multiple sizes and colors, depending on each user’s preferences.
Given the facts outlined above, closed captions are always a better choice. But
Speak With A New York ADA Web Accessibility Lawyer Today
If your website offers videos, then those videos must come with captions. And, just as we clarified in the guide above, these captions should be closed captions, as opposed to open captions.
Speak with a New York ADA web accessibility lawyer at The Samuel Law Firm today and we will defend you from the ADA claim/lawsuit that you are facing.
