Non-Speech Sounds

Auditory content in media that is not spoken dialogue, including music, environmental noises, sound effects, laughter, applause, and other ambient sounds. Non-speech sounds carry important narrative, emotional, and contextual information that contributes to a viewer's understanding of audio-visual content. For deaf and hard of hearing people, access to non-speech sounds through captioning is essential for a complete media experience, yet most automatic captioning systems focus exclusively on speech. Captioning guidelines recommend including non-speech sounds using bracketed text descriptions (e.g., [laughter], [door slams]) when they are relevant to understanding the content.