Open and closed captions in cinemas

Both carry the same thing: the dialogue plus the non-speech information a deaf or hard-of-hearing viewer needs — who is speaking, music, a door slamming off screen. The difference is only in who sees it.

Open captions are rendered on the screen itself. Everybody in the room sees them, which is why they are usually confined to specific, advertised showings. Closed captions travel as a separate data stream in the DCP and are sent to individual devices — a small display on a flexible arm in the cupholder, or glasses — so a captioned viewer can sit in any ordinary showing.

Captions are not the same as subtitles. A subtitle translates dialogue for people who can hear but do not speak the language; a caption describes the soundtrack for people who cannot hear it. The packaging side of that is covered under subtitles in a DCP.

Open-caption showings are the part cinemas decide for themselves, and they are where most of the audience demand sits: many deaf and older viewers find the devices tiring and would rather see the text on screen. The practical questions are which titles, which days and which times — and whether the showings are genuinely findable.

That last part is where most cinemas fall down. An open-caption screening that exists only in a ticketing system's internal attribute, and never appears as a filter or a label on the website and in the app, will be under-attended, and under-attended showings get cut. Label them clearly in the listing, let people filter for them, and put them in the booking confirmation so the front-of-house team knows which devices to have charged.