Why people use subtitles and captioning

I’ve been attending a series of events for Digital Accessibility Week 2026, a cross-government online event taking place from Monday 18 May ending on Thursday 21 May which is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD).

One of the events was Designing with autistic people – Inclusive design that benefits everyone, organised by HMRC’s digital accessibility team.

Delivered by Irina Rusakova, an Inclusive design and research consultant, it was a fascinating and powerful insight into how autistic and neurodivergent people are frequently let down by design that fails to meet their needs. I encourage you to read Irina’s published research including her 7 principles of designing for autistic people.

However, powerful as the session was, I want to focus on one small part, not strictly related to autism and neurodiversity.

Inclusion fuels innovation

As with many accessibility talks, we touched on the fallacy that inclusive design stifles innovation.

Irina demonstrated several examples showing how in fact the reverse is true, including electric toothbrushes, flexible straws and captions/subtitles – all technologies that were designed to include people with disabilities but which were then widely adopted by non-disabled people because they are just incredibly useful.

Irina asked those watching the webinar if they had used any of these technologies and invited comments in the meeting chat. There were over 200 people watching, and this elicited 65 replies.

Why people use captions/subtitles

For some reason, most responses focused on captions/subtitles. We’ve all seen plenty of anecdotal evidence that captions are widely used by people with no disability, but here was some – admittedly unscientific but nevertheless intriguing – data about who does so, and why.

After the webinar, I gathered the replies and copied them into a Miro board so I could group them into themes. I colour-coded the sticky notes so those from neurodivergent people stood out. (They’re the pink ones).

Results

Here are the reasons people gave for using captions or subtitles, from most to least common theme:

1. Just the norm now
   • People said things like “I always have captions on now” and “yep – captions being used now!”
   • What seems to emerge is that people started using them for one reason or another and found them so helpful that it’s just what they do now, a habit
   • All the reponses in this theme seemed to come from neurotypical people
2. Situational
   • Responses included “To watch on a train”, “got them on now as in a noisy office”, and “Background noise!”
   • The theme is in situations where people don’t want to disturb others and/or where background noise would make listening to the audio difficult or impossible
   • Although one person mentioned “Watching while eating”!
   • All the reponses in this theme seemed to come from neurotypical people
3. Language
   • Responses included “struggle to understand accents”, “Bi-lingual household”, and “Learning a foreign language”
   • The theme is the language being spoken is unfamiliar and translations are helpful
   • All the responses in this theme seemed to come from neurotypical people
4. Concentration/processing
   • Responses included “Sometimes intensive films”, which I take to mean intense, whispered dialogue, “Yes, helps me to concentrate”, and “always! struggle with auditory processing”
   • The theme is that a combination of audio and captions reduces cognitive load and enables enhanced understanding/easier processing of the information presented by the audio
   • Three of the ten responses in this theme came from people who self-identified as neurodivergent
5. Sleeping children
   • This one surprised me
   • Responses included “When holding my sleeping child”, “Warching tv quietly so as not to wake sleeping children”, and “We relied on closed captions when we had children, and can’t watch TV without them now”
   • The theme is that even if your hearing is perfectly good, sometimes people want to understand the audio without sound to avoid disturbing others, especially young children
   • All the responses in this theme seemed to come from neurotypical people
6. To aid ‘hearing’
   • Responses included “Use CC as I’m autistic and sometimes can’t ‘hear’ without them”
     • Someone who did not identify as neurodivergent said “I relate to this so much”
   • My wife sometimes says she turns then stereo off when she parks our car as it helps her ‘see’ better
   • Other responses were:
     • “I always say ‘I can’t hear without my subtitles!’ – I genuinely can’t comprehend what’s going on without them in noisy environment when haven’t got earphones”
     • “they’re super helpful for a lot of ND folk”
   • It seems people who are or are not neurodivergent use these technologies to aid comprehension, to aid their comprehension of speech
7. Hearing loss
   • A small number of people reported hearing loss as an issue. They said:
     • “Yes. My daughter is deaf. We use it all the time now”
     • Yes, when my hearing isn’t up to the others I’m watching with!”

Conclusions

Of 65 comments, only 7 (just under 11%) were from people who self-identified as neurodivergent (based on the comments they made, or the bio they submitted for the call).

This is an over-representation compared to most generally-accepted estimates of neurodiversity at a population level in the UK, but understandably so given the subject and audience.

Only 2 people mentioned hearing loss as a driver of their adoption of subtitles/captions. 1% of the total audience, or 3% of all comments. Bear in mind that hearing loss was why this technology was developed. For sure, it is still indispensable for them, but they are no longer the primary users.

Design for:

• People with sleeping children
• People in multi-lingual households
• People in noisy environments
• People in quiet environments
• People watching foreign language content
• Neurodivergent people
• D/deaf and hard of hearing people
• People