Tracked Captions

Captions that move dynamically within the video frame to stay near the current speaker's face or mouth, rather than remaining anchored at a fixed position (typically the bottom of the video). Tracked captions reduce the visual effort required for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing viewers to alternate between reading text and watching facial expressions, lip movements, and gestures — all of which carry meaning in spoken and signed communication. Empirical research in classrooms has shown that tracked captions improve perceived accessibility for DHH students compared to fixed-position captions, and related approaches include speech-bubble captions in augmented reality and video-conferencing overlays that reposition around multiple speakers.