Subtitles

Text displayed on screen that represents the spoken language in audio-visual content, primarily intended for viewers who do not understand the language being spoken. While often used interchangeably with captions, subtitles and captions serve different purposes: subtitles translate or transcribe the spoken language for people who can hear but may not understand the language, whereas captions provide access to all audio content — including non-speech sounds, speaker identification, and music descriptions — for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. This distinction is important in accessibility work because auto-generated "subtitles" that only capture speech leave DHH viewers without access to significant audio information.