captioning Written by Jamie Buffington-Adams Contributor to SAGE Publications's The SAGE Deaf Studies Encyclopedia (2016) whose work appears in Britannica as part of a joint publishing agreement with SAGE. Jamie Buffington-Adams Fact-checked by Britannica Editors Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree.... Britannica Editors Last updated Apr. 30, 2026 •History Captioning is the process of displaying a transcription of the audio portion of a program on a television, video screen, or other visual display. There are two types of captioning: open captioning, which is visible to all viewers because it is hard-coded into the program; and closed captioning, which has embedded coding that a viewer must activate in order to see the captions. Developed with the needs of the deaf community in mind, captioning first...

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