A host of abbreviations appears after many TV programs, movies, and other video online. What does it all mean?
My household, somewhere in the early stages of the pandemic, may have transitioned like yours: we started enabling captions on nearly all the video we watch. The young people, they like captions, as it apparently enables continuous partial attention and simultaneously provides more information. But it’s great for all ages. Like many kinds of accessibility measures, it most directly aids people who need supplementary assistance—such as for low or no hearing or vision—but it’s also worthwhile for anyone who finds it useful to know exactly what’s actually being said. With varying hearing and processing needs in my home, captions have just become de rigueur. (And because we watched a lot of U.K. television and need it to decipher some of the regional accents! Johnny Vegas: what are you saying?) In addition to captions and subtitles, videos may come with supplementary audio descriptions that use the spoken word to further explain what’s happening on screen. When you start digging into Apple’s captioning and audio description offerings and options, however, you might get lost in the symbols and choices.
