Toward Language Justice: Exploring Multilingual Captioning for Accessibility

A growing body of research investigates how to make captioning experiences more accessible and enjoyable to disabled people. However, prior work has focused largely on English captioning, neglecting the majority of people who are multilingual (i.e., understand or express themselves in more than one language). To address this gap, we conducted semi-structured interviews and diary logs with 13 participants who used multilingual captions for accessibility. Our findings highlight the linguistic and cultural dimensions of captioning, detailing how language features (scripts and orthography) and the inclusion/negation of cultural context shape the accessibility of captions. Despite lack of quality and availability, participants emphasized the importance of multilingual captioning to learn a new language, build community, and preserve cultural heritage. Moving toward a future where all ways of communicating are celebrated, we present ways to orient captioning research to a language justice agenda that decenters English and engages with varied levels of fluency.