Add accessible captions to a TikTok video
TikTok's caption sticker is optional and easy to miss — for a deaf or hard-of-hearing viewer, or someone using a screen reader, a video without it is effectively unavailable, and there's no way to fix that from the viewer side.
Transcribing the audio directly produces a caption file (SRT/VTT) you can attach if you're re-publishing the video, or a plain-text transcript you can post alongside it — useful for a business or creator account that wants every upload accessible regardless of whether the in-app sticker was used at record time.
- Doesn't depend on whether the original creator enabled TikTok's own caption sticker.
- SRT/VTT for a proper caption track; plain text for screen-reader users who need it as page content, not an in-player overlay.
- Useful for business/brand accounts standardizing accessibility across every upload.
TikTok specifics
- Typical length
- Mostly 15 seconds to 3 minutes, with a smaller tail of videos up to 10 minutes.
- Worth knowing
- Because visible captions are baked into the video pixels rather than stored as text, getting a real caption file means transcribing the audio track directly — true whether or not the on-screen captions are visible.
Best formats for accessibility
- SRT — a closed-caption track
- VTT — a closed-caption track for web players
- TXT — a plain-text transcript published next to the video, for screen readers
Workflow
- Transcribe the TikTok video.
- Export SRT/VTT and attach it as the video's caption track.
- Also publish the plain-text transcript on the page — a screen reader can read page text directly, but it can't parse a caption track embedded in a video player.
FAQ
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More for TikTok
The free tier includes 15 minutes of video a month, AI transcripts in any language, and TXT/SRT/VTT/JSON export — enough to run one TikTok video through and see the output before committing to anything.