Flash 8 Cookbook

23.6. Providing Captions

Problem

You want to provide captions of audio content for the hearing impaired.

Solution

Create captions manually using keyframes and static text for audio placed on a timeline with the Sync option set to Stream. If you want to add captions to video, see Chapter 18.

Discussion

Captions are more than just a transcript of spoken words in a movie or video. In addition to spoken language, captions also indicate ambient noises, audible silences, and who is speaking (when the speaker is off-camera or not obvious). Captions, like text alternatives for people with vision impairments, should provide a full alternative to the audio content.

To add captions to audio that’s been added to a timeline you need to set the sound’s Sync setting to Stream. As noted in Chapter 17, the Stream option causes Flash to keep the timeline in sync with the sound as it plays back.

After you’ve selected Stream from the Sync setting for the sound, you can next add static text to keyframes whereby the text corresponds to the audio that’s playing back at that moment. When you add captions, make sure that you test the playback of the text for readability as you are working. It’s generally better to use longer strings of text per caption so that the reader doesn’t have to deal with lots of smaller strings of text flashing by too quickly to read.

If you want to add captions to Flash video, see Chapter 18.

See Also

Recipe 8.1