Captions are an Accessibility Service for Android which can help deaf and hard-of-hearing users interact with their devices more easily. Other users, such as those whose first language is not English may also benefit from captions being displayed. The service will display captions in all apps that use captions, such as video apps with subtitles.

This page explains how to turn on Captions.

Fig 1.

Fig 2.

Fig 3.

The following options will now become available:

Language

Select ‘Language’ to change the language of the captions.

Fig 4.

Text size

Select ‘Text size’ to change the size of captions text. There are five options:

Fig 5.

Caption style

Select ‘Caption style’ to change the colour of caption text. There are five options:

Fig 6.

Selecting ‘Custom’ will cause additional options to appear on the main captions options screen.

Font family

Select ‘Font family’ to change the font. There are five options:

Fig 7.

Text colour

Select ‘Text colour’ to change the colour of text.

Fig 8.

Edge type

Select ‘Edge type’ to change the outline of the text. There are three options:

Fig 9.

Selecting ‘Outline’ or ‘Drop shadow’ will activate the ‘Edge colour’ option.

Fig 10.

Background colour ‘Background colour’ lets you change the background that captions are displayed on.

Fig 11.

‘Text opacity’ lets you change the text opacity for captions displayed.

Fig 12.

NOTE: These instructions apply to the standard version of Android as found in the Google Nexus range. They also apply to other devices (as long as they are using the same operating system) but please be aware that there may be minor differences. This is due to the custom ‘skins’ some companies apply to their mobile devices instead of the stock Android theme.