Day 17: Use Closed Captions on Social Media

Repost yesterday’s video on social media with closed captions and tag #ABD21DayChallenge and #AccessibleByDesign. Closed captions enable the inclusion of people who are deaf or hard of hearing as well as neurodiverse, and help others consume audio content when in a loud or noisy environment.

This accessibility feature can be turned on and off. When activated, it provides an on-screen textual transcription of dialogue and other sounds synchronized with the video and audio.

Follow the instructions below for your desired platform to add closed captions to a video. These instructions are available on the platform’s accessibility page.

Note: Since multiple social media platforms require transcripts as an SRT file, you can use the file from yesterday’s challenge.

LinkedIn

1. From the share box at the top of your LinkedIn homepage (desktop experience), click the “Video” icon.
2. In the pop-up that appears, click “Select video to share.”
3. Select the video you would like to share from your desktop.
4. From the video preview that appears, click “Edit” in the top right corner to view your video’s settings.
5. Click “Select caption” to attach an SRT file and confirm your selection.
6. Add any additional text or hashtags and click “Post.”
7. Once the video is uploaded, processed, and ready to view, you will get a notification. The closed captioning will be viewable at that time.

Facebook

1. Click “Photo/Video” at the top of your timeline or News Feed.
2. Choose a video from your computer.
3. Then click “Post.”
4. Facebook will notify you when your video is ready to view. Click the notification or the grey date and time at the top of the post on your News Feed or timeline.
5. Click the three dots in the top right.
6. Select “Edit video.”
7. Click “Choose file” below “Upload SRT files.” 
8. Select a srt file from your computer.
9. Click “Save.”
10. To add captions in other languages, repeat steps 4–6 for each additional language you want to add.

Instagram

Presently, Instagram does not support SRT files for videos, though there is an automatic caption generator for stories and IGTV videos.

Instagram Stories

1. Take or upload a video in the create tab.
2. Select the “Stickers” option at the top.
3. Select the “(CC) Captions” sticker.

IGTV

First, auto-generated captions will need to be enabled for your account. To do this:

1. Go to the “Profile” tab.
2. Select “Settings.”
3. Select “Account.”
4. Tap “Captions.”
5. Switch on “Auto-Generated Captions.”
6. This will enable auto-captioning on IGTV videos.

Enabling the captions for your own IGTV video

1. Upload the IGTV video.
2. On the “New IGTV Video” screen, select “Advanced Settings” at the bottom of the screen.
3. Turn on “Auto-Generated Captions.”
4. Tap “Done.”
5. Auto-Generated Captions in black and white text will now automatically appear on your video.

Twitter

1. Click on a video within your Media Studio library.
2. Select the “Subtitles” tab in the pop-up window.
3. Select the text language of your subtitle file from the dropdown menu.
4. Click the “Upload” button.
5. Select the sidecar .SRT file from your local computer.
6. The file is now associated with your video.
7. To update the file, click the Pencil icon.