Open Captioning vs Closed Captioning

The distinction in practice

Open captioning renders the words into the video file itself. Always visible, identical on every device, impossible to switch off.

Closed captioning ships the words as a separate track. The player draws them, and the viewer can toggle, restyle, resize or translate them.

Accessibility and compliance favour closed captioning

Accessibility standards generally expect captions the viewer can control — size, colour and position all matter to people who rely on them. A burned-in caption removes that control entirely.

Closed captions are also machine-readable, so platforms index them and can translate them. Words baked into pixels are invisible to both.

When open captioning is still the right call

Muted autoplay feeds. Most viewers never tap a caption control, so on short-form social video, burned-in text is the only text that gets read.

The practical answer for most creators is both: a closed caption track on the long-form upload, and open captions on the short cut. More detail on the open caption vs closed caption page.

Open Captioning vs Closed Captioning FAQ