Offer a Transcript Whenever Possible
Put all the text from your captions into a document or separate screen to create a transcript of the video. (Make sure you’re following accessibility guidelines for documents and web content!)
Linking to Your Transcript
Place a link to your transcript, or provide the entire transcript itself, in close proximity to your video.
Formatting Your Transcript Document
- To force a line break, use a blank line.
- To designate sounds, use square brackets. For example: [intro music].
- Add >> to identify speakers or a change of speaker.
- For transcript documents in a language that is not English, save the file with UTF-8 encoding to improve display accuracy.
Sample Transcript Formatting
>> INSTRUCTOR: Hi, class. Today we’ll be moving on to the next chapter. We've got a lot of ground to cover, so let's go ahead and turn to page
[cough]
>> STUDENT: Excuse me, can I ask about the homework first?
>> INSTRUCTOR: Sure, what’s your question?
Transcripts and YouTube
Note that YouTube automatically provides a transcript when captions are added to a video. You will still need to edit the auto-generated transcript to ensure accuracy.