I use captions too, even though I can (usually) hear the TV. There are many reasons for this:
- I think it makes it somewhat easier to understand than audio only, for one thing.
- If you do not know what they said, because you have missed it, possibly due to other noise in the room (telephone, other people speaking, etc).
- Sometimes the speech of the movie is difficult due to e.g. you do not understand the accent of their speech, etc.
- If you want to reduce the volume or mute to not bother other people.
- If you do not know how to spell someone's name, or an obscure word. (Unfortunately, sometimes the caption writers do not know, and do it wrong.)
- In some shows, they will mention the name of a piece of music; this can help in case you do not know. (They do not always do this, though.)
However, there are often problems with them. For example, sometimes the caption writers do not know what they are saying, either. The caption writers should try to make an effort to find out what they are saying (and the proper spelling), by whatever means are appropriate, e.g. referring to the script, asking the people there, watching the show twice to make corrections if necessary, etc. (This might not always be possible, e.g. live shows that are broadcast as they are being filmed rather than being edited later, but they should do it when possible.)
I also sometimes see worthless captions, e.g. "male announcer reads words on screen". I think that is worthless, and should be omitted.
(If you can specify "hidden captions", then it may be useful to encode the text which is already part of the picture, as a hidden caption and then allow it to be displayed in a caption scrollback menu if the TV system you are using has such a menu (I do not know of any that do have it, but it is something that I would think would be good to have).)
A good feature of captions is that you can turn on/off, and can customize fonts/opacity on some receivers (I personally prefer translucent captions). (DVD video only allows on/off (and selection by language, sometimes), although it should also be possible to allow adjusting colours/opacity (since DVD subtitles are encoded as pictures using indexed colours), although font changing will not be possible.)
I think they are not very useful even for someone who cannot hear them, though. The picture should be obvious what it is meaning and the captions might cover up the words in the picture (I have seen that happen before).
- I think it makes it somewhat easier to understand than audio only, for one thing.
- If you do not know what they said, because you have missed it, possibly due to other noise in the room (telephone, other people speaking, etc).
- Sometimes the speech of the movie is difficult due to e.g. you do not understand the accent of their speech, etc.
- If you want to reduce the volume or mute to not bother other people.
- If you do not know how to spell someone's name, or an obscure word. (Unfortunately, sometimes the caption writers do not know, and do it wrong.)
- In some shows, they will mention the name of a piece of music; this can help in case you do not know. (They do not always do this, though.)
However, there are often problems with them. For example, sometimes the caption writers do not know what they are saying, either. The caption writers should try to make an effort to find out what they are saying (and the proper spelling), by whatever means are appropriate, e.g. referring to the script, asking the people there, watching the show twice to make corrections if necessary, etc. (This might not always be possible, e.g. live shows that are broadcast as they are being filmed rather than being edited later, but they should do it when possible.)
I also sometimes see worthless captions, e.g. "male announcer reads words on screen". I think that is worthless, and should be omitted.
(If you can specify "hidden captions", then it may be useful to encode the text which is already part of the picture, as a hidden caption and then allow it to be displayed in a caption scrollback menu if the TV system you are using has such a menu (I do not know of any that do have it, but it is something that I would think would be good to have).)
A good feature of captions is that you can turn on/off, and can customize fonts/opacity on some receivers (I personally prefer translucent captions). (DVD video only allows on/off (and selection by language, sometimes), although it should also be possible to allow adjusting colours/opacity (since DVD subtitles are encoded as pictures using indexed colours), although font changing will not be possible.)