[Athen] Open AND Closed Captions

[Michael Joanisse]

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping to get your help and feedback on something.

Say you have a video. The video is comprised of multiple speakers. Some of them speak in French, and others in English. The page, is in English.

When a French speaker speaks, Open captions are used / displayed to translate text.  Now, this project has WCAG 2.0 requirement, which means closed captions are a must.

Consequently to the video having superimposed open caption text, the client I am working with is proposing to create "partial" closed captions that omit the text already present via "open caption". The reason / goal in doing that is to prevent duplicated / overlapping text (see this screenshot for example).

My initial thought was "Whoa, sound the alarm! This seems strange and is likely problematic." My first reaction and response was "Why not just drop the open captions altogether and offer closed captions in French and / or English?" Ok, sure. But, let's say the video content is not modifiable? Open captions can't be removed. What is a reasonable comprise?

Some potential problems that first come to mind:

	• Instead of relying on the transcript, a blind person decides to listen to the video using CC. If that we're the case, the content would be incomplete therefore obfuscating the experience.
	• The position / placement of closed captions is not always aligned with where the open caption text resides, if I'm reading the closed captions and all of a sudden the text is all of a sudden gone but I can see that the person on-screen is still speaking, it would be confusing.
	• ... And the list goes on?

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What I'm asking is, in your opinions, given this scenario... How would you go about things and do you agree that using a hybrid open and closed caption should be discouraged? Although not ideal, would it not be better to include the full closed captions text even if it "overlaps" the open caption text at times?

Thanks in advance,

Michel Joanisse