Closed Captions Blocking Content

Hi John!

Thanks so much for posting your question here in the forums. I really like this question - very interesting challenge you're faced with. Ah, the challenges of Instructional Designers.... I am not sure there's really a right or wrong answer here, I think it depends on a large variety of variables. I would consider some of the following:

• What percentage of the course audience will need to view the CC'd content? Just a handful of people, if any? Or, almost your whole audience?
• Is the CC area being added because of accessibility or guidelines you need to follow, or was it by choice?
• How much additional clicking/actions will be necessary to view the CC'd content? Will that impact or interrupt the flow of the content on the slides? 

Just a few things to consider! I'd love to hear what you end up deciding and why, and I'd also be really interested in other community members who've used CC boxes in their own courses and if they know of any best practices... Thanks again for the question John!

Hi John,

I'm not sure how 'big' your captions box needs to be but have you seen this Free caption box example I shared with the community a while back? It has a scrollbar feature for when your captions are really long.

Of the top I'd say I would not want to overlay content with a closed captions box. You could make the CC box semi transparent so users would see if something is underneath but if your course design requires them to close and open the CC box all the time you are going to annoy the heck out of your users and they'll be more busy finding out if there's something underneath that CC box than with the actual course content. 

'What if...' you design your slides based on a 16:9 resolution and actually build your content in a 4:3 resolution. That way you'd have the lower part of the slide available for the CC box and nothing would need to be underneath.