Introducing Caption with Intention©, a revolutionary caption design system that will better convey
the magic of cinema for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community.

Around the world, 466 million people live with hearing disabilities and rely on captions for the verbal and sonic cues that are so much a part of the film viewing experience. Yet, in the 50 years since its introduction, this system hasn’t evolved. Caption with Intention aims to remedy this.

VIDEO CASE

INTRODUCING
CAPTION WITH INTENTION©

Recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a RAISE partner, Caption with Intention© is a dynamic captioning system that adds unprecedented emotion, context, and clarity to enhance the viewing experience for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities.

The new system fills gaps in understanding from legacy captions in three crucial ways: ATTRIBUTION, SYNCHRONIZATION & INTONATION.

THE design SYSTEM

ATTRIBUTION: Identifying who the active speaker is.

With current captions, it’s easy to confuse who is speaking, and the misunderstanding of even a single word’s attribution can hugely impact the understanding and enjoyment of a film.

Caption with Intention©, however, uses different colors for different characters, allowing the audience to quickly understand who is speaking the words on screen. This enables a new level of clarity and enjoyment in scenes that involve multiple people or conversations where the dialogue bounces back and forth quickly between characters.

BEHIND THE TECH

SYNCHRONIZATION: Keeping time with when a word or phrase is spoken.

Traditional captions do not sync precisely to an actor’s spoken words, throwing off the timing of specific points, emotions, and humor. Imagine an entire family laughing at a joke before a deaf individual even has a chance to understand the moment.

To solve this, Caption With Intention© uses dynamic animation, allowing captioned words to change from white to their character-specific color as they’re spoken. This will lead to a better understanding of not only the words spoken, but the intent behind them.

INTONATION: Visualizing how dialogue is delivered.

One of the most-significant shortcomings of today’s captions is the lack of intonation, or emotion. With little exception today’s captions lack even basic information like volume or tone. This undercuts much of the meaning the film’s creators intend to convey - significantly reducing the deaf community’s ability to feel the full-impact of a performance.

To remedy this, Caption With Intention© uses a variable typeface. This allows the words on screen to communicate more than just what words are being spoken: they will also convey the emotions behind those words. For the first time, cues for volume and pitch will give a new understanding to not only what was said, but how it was said.

Download the system

CO-CREATED WITH THE COMMUNITY

Caption with Intention was developed through a yearlong testing methodology rooted in direct collaboration with the Deaf community.
We began by listening—learning firsthand what wasn’t working with traditional captioning, from timing to attribution to emotional clarity.
Using scenes from acclaimed films, we created caption design prototypes and presented them to panels of Deaf participants in structured focus groups. Feedback was gathered through a custom digital tablet system that allowed for real-time reactions and preferences.
That input directly informed the evolution of the system, which was refined through multiple rounds of iteration—resulting in a captioning standard co-created with the community it was built to serve.

TESTS

community-APPROVED

CHICAGO HEARING SOCIETY

The input of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community has been essential in the development of Caption with Intention©.

Working with the Chicago Hearing Society, an organization that has provided access and support services for the Deaf, DeafBlind, and Hard of Hearing community since 1916, various forms of captions were applied to acclaimed films. Together, we have arrived at the captioning-experience you see here.