Participatory Captioning

A framework proposed by Nguyen et al. (2026) that characterises social media video captioning as a collaborative, community-sustained infrastructure co-produced by viewers, creators, and platforms — rather than a top-down accessibility feature delivered unilaterally. Participatory Captioning recognises that captions are continually created, corrected, annotated, and reinterpreted through viewer feedback, creator adjustments, and platform affordances, and names three core principles: shared labour, accessibility-first design, and systemic platform support. The framework extends participatory-design theory and the Collective Communication Access (CCA) model, and raises governance questions about invisible labour, epistemic authority, and how platforms should acknowledge and sustain the community contributions that keep captions usable.