While closed captioning was once a niche service used mostly by hard-of-hearing viewers, subtitles have seen an explosion in the streaming age; deaf-led charity Stagetext found in a 2021 survey that 80 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds use subtitles some or all of the time when watching TV on any device, and only 10 percent of those surveyed were deaf or hard of hearing. It also found that only 23 percent of those in the 56-75 age group use captions, despite a higher rate of hearing loss.
This cultural shift has coincided with there being more to watch than ever before, particularly with content that is streamed around the world rather than just broadcast in the U.S. That’s created a massive task for the companies behind film and TV captioning. “Everything has changed in the past 10 years,” says Heather York, vp marketing and government affairs for Vitac, the largest captioning company in North America.