Caption With Intention (case study)

The “Caption with Intention” campaign marks a groundbreaking leap in caption design, born from a collaboration between FCB Chicago, the Chicago Hearing Society, Rakish Entertainment, and endorsed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This initiative reimagines closed captioning—largely unchanged since the 1970s—as a dynamic and expressive medium. By using animation, color, and variable typography, it conveys not only dialogue, but also emotional subtleties like tone, pacing, and speaker identity that hearing viewers often take for granted.

The inspiration behind the project emerged organically from within FCB Chicago, sparked by So A Ryu, a hard‑of‑hearing designer who recognized how traditional captioning stripped nuance from emotional content, and Bruno Mazzotti, a CODA who intimately understood the gap in the narrative experience his deaf parents faced . Their partnership with CHS ensured that lived experiences remained central to each design decision.

Together, they co‑created a system rooted in synchronization, intonation, and character attribution, drawing on detailed feedback from Deaf and hard‑of‑hearing audiences. This testing process included sample scenes from widely known films such as Barbie, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, and The Dark Knight, where viewers discovered for the first time that captions could distinguish between Bruce Wayne and Batman via typography variations.

Technically, Caption with Intention was engineered to integrate seamlessly within existing caption workflows, remaining compliant with regulatory standards such as FCC requirements and preserving legibility and contrast. Its modular design allows content creators to adopt the system without disrupting current production pipelines, while significantly enriching the cinematic experience for deaf and hard‑of‑hearing audiences.

In a powerful acknowledgment of its impact, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored the initiative with an Award of Merit during the Scientific and Technical Awards, and announced that the system will become part of its representation and inclusion standards for Best Picture eligibility starting next year.

Beyond its acclaim, what sets Caption with Intention apart is its open‑source ethos. By releasing the technology freely, the campaign champions widespread adoption among film studios, streaming platforms, and broadcasters. Ongoing efforts include multilingual support, live broadcasting applications, and onboarding tools aimed at integrating the system at scale.

In essence, this campaign transforms captioning from a functional necessity into an artful narrative tool. It shifts accessibility from a bureaucratic checkbox to a cornerstone of creative storytelling, fully embracing the idea that captions deserve the same care and innovation afforded to sound design and visual editing.