Turning Accessibility Features On

Captions in audio and video do not always appear automatically. Each different player has settings to allow the user to turn captions and other accessibility features on or off.

QuickTime:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime

The ability to turn captions on or off is only found in QuickTime Pro ($29.99, from Apple). The free, downloadable version of QuickTime does not have this feature, but users of the free version can upgrade at any time by purchasing a license number from Apple. Whether captions play in a QuickTime movie by default depends on the author of the QuickTime movie. If the author saves the QuickTime movie with the caption track on, it will play by default in all QuickTime players. If the author disables the caption track before saving the movie, the caption track will not play by default, and will thus be accessible only to users of QuickTime Pro.

RealPlayer:

http://www.real.com

All versions of the RealPlayer allow the user to turn captions on or off. Select the View menu, and choose "Preferences...". Select the Content tab, and click on the button labeled "Settings..." at the bottom of the window. A dialog box will pop up, and you can either check or uncheck "Use accessibility features when available".

Windows Media Player:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/en/default.asp

The Windows Media Player allows the user to turn captions on or off using the "Captions" option in the View menu.

Oratrix GRiNS:

http://www.oratrix.com

Accessibility features can be toggled on or off in the GRiNS player via "Preferences" in the File menu. The dialog box that pops up allows the user to indicate that captions or extended audio descriptions should or should not be played.