Closed captioning

The logo "CC" in a rounded white rectangle, framed black
The CC in a television symbol was created at WGBH.
A symbol of a slashed ear
The "Slashed ear" symbol is the International Symbol for Deafness used by TVNZ and other New Zealand broadcasters, as well as on VHS tapes released by Alliance Atlantis. The symbol was used[when?] on road signs to identify TTY access. A similar symbol depicting an ear (slashed or not) is used on television in several other countries, including France and Spain.

Closed captioning (CC) is a form of subtitling, a process of displaying text on a television, video screen, or other visual display to provide additional or interpretive information, where the viewer is given the choice of whether the text is displayed. Closed captions are typically used as a transcription of the audio portion of a program as it occurs (either verbatim or in edited form), sometimes including descriptions of non-speech elements. Other uses have included providing a textual alternative language translation of a presentation's primary audio language that is usually burned-in (or "open") to the video and unselectable.

HTML5 defines subtitles as a "transcription or translation of the dialogue when sound is available but not understood" by the viewer (for example, dialogue in a foreign language) and captions as a "transcription or translation of the dialogue, sound effects, relevant musical cues, and other relevant audio information when sound is unavailable or not clearly audible" (for example, when audio is muted or the viewer is deaf or hard of hearing).[1]

  1. ^ "4.8.10 The track element". HTML Standard. Archived from the original on 2013-06-06.