[Hopefully Helpful] PSA:

If you're a content creator and make videos that will include text, titles, pop-ups, graphics, info, or even your own sporadic hard captions, please please consider not putting them at the bottom.

They interfere with and cannot be seen with captions on.

Lemme explain (and offer potential solutions)!

For most devices/platforms, captions are bottom center or left. A *couple* places let the user move em but most don't.

When a creator adds a pop-up info box, quote, joke heading, tweet/article screenshot, it's hidden behind the CC.

If the creator/voiceover ends up reading out or explaining whatever was added there, it's not too much of an issue, bc we still got to find out through the captions, but!

For text-heavy pop-ups or titles, it can make the CCs themselves v hard to read unless at 100% opacity.

And 100% opacity isn't desirable for many of us; we can miss details or the full experience w/o that hint of movement or color - esp on small screens.

But when clashing against other text - even at 100% - the brain competes w/ what to read. Then even verbalizing it doesn't help.

The only option we then have to see those important pop-ups, infographics, or details is to pause, turn off captions, rewind, play through, pause again, turn em back on, go -- sometimes 10x per video. And then a few videos in a row. Trust me, it gets old.

So what can ya do?

1. We're all already fighting w/ platforms to make captions more accessible and customizable in the first place. But if YT's recent elimination of community-submitted CCs (often the only accurate ones we ever get ever) is any indication?

That's not our solution any time soon.

(P.S. Obligatory sidebar for a #NoMoreCRAPtions plug annnd encouragement for capable creators to also caption all their own content. Pay someone, it's great.)

Anywho, 2.
Place all these kinds of add-ons listed as top-down drops or slide-ins from the side.

I know it's not the ~aesthetic~ balance most have seen, or the way you were taught in film school, but it gives you a chance to be creative, flex a muscle, separate you from others, and be accessible.

Sci-Show does lots of central and "side text" slide-ins; it can be done!

Also, the more that folks do this, the more it becomes the visual norm anyway. It rarely looks odd or even noticeable to a viewer, just different than you may've pictured in your head before creating it. And different =/= bad.

So, go on and het that sweet sweet top drop text!

3. If you're really committed to lower-thirds or there's something specific about your format that doesn't really give you room to play, try to at least bump the text/etc to the upper most limits of that lower-third.

It'll likely be juuust enough to get mostly above most CCs!

4. If you're a viewer/creator and notice that others have lotsa these along the bottom, help us out by giving them a thoughtful nudge or lead em to this thread. Kindly and gently though, not aggressive callouts or shaming. That helps no one.

CC/HCs at ALL are the bigger fight.

As a final note, I know a lot of people and creators think anything caption-related is a lot of effort to go through for a very small percentage of your audience.

But here's the thing!! It's not small AND it'll help widen your audience considerably! It benefits YOU! Greatly.

d/Deaf and HoH folks are notttt the only people who use captions! (Though, even if they were, you should still wanna make your content available to them.)

Folks who don't speak your language fluently use them, those on public transport, moms keeping their volume low around baby,

people eating crunchy snacks, folks with ADHD/processing disorders/learning disabilities who find they help, students who learn visually better than audibly, sooo many people use captions!!

So, any accessibility you provide just brings swaths more viewers to your stuff! Win/win!