Closed Captioning – Benefits for Training Videos

With the Internet taking over the world by storm, videos have been gaining a lot of ground lately. Video usage is finding increased usage in the modern life, with an estimated 204 million online video viewers in the US alone. Video continues to grow in importance across many organizations and departments too. In training, videosprovide a unique learning experience offered by no other medium. Trainees can learn with total control.

And as it is a universally accepted fact that videos are instrumental for information retention and skill development, there is one small addition that can greatly improve these areas: using captions.

Closed captioning services are those subtitles that you see at the bottom of a movie or video.

Benefits of using captions in training videos

Using captions in training videos set forth numerous advantages, a few of which are mentioned below.

• Captions foster inclusiveness – It is crucial for any training program to be inclusive in nature and also take cognizance of the fact that there may be users with certain disabilities. If any user suffers from a learning disability like dyslexia or ADD, closed captions are instrumental in maintaining focus on the video. The same goes for people with hearing impairment. Various studies have revealed that subtitles in any videoenhance its effectiveness and positive influence on the viewers.
• Help users to focus better – Though the video learning content is highly dynamic and engaging, sometimes the users lose focus while trying to concentrate on both, image and dialogs. Captions effectively solve this problem by keeping the user’s attention on the video for longer and helps them focus on the training content.
• Closed Captioning overcomes language barriers – The rapidly flourishing Internet has made the training programs go global.  With businesses and offices no longer being geographically confined to a specific area, a large number of employees are non-native English speakers. Captions are a great way to elucidate video dialogue and speaker accents, ensuring clear communication in your training videos. In case the users aren’t fluent in English, captions can easily be translated into subtitles for various languages.
• Promote information retention – another important aspect to be considered while designing content for any training video is the retention of information by the users. It is a well-established fact that a combination of both visual aids and oral explanation aids better understanding and longer information retention.

So whether you want to effectively train your organization, reach a global market, reach out to the hearing-impaired population, or help your employees attain better learning, captioning service is your answer.