Transcription is the process in which speech or audio is converted into a written document. Closed captions are time-coded to the video, while a transcript is just the text with no time information.

Transcription is a great option to make audio-only programs, such as podcasts and radio shows, more accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. When it comes to video, transcription is a great complement to closed-captioning; however, it is not considered a substitute based on accessibility laws and standards.

Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of language in written form. The source can either be speech or sign language or preexisting text in another writing system. Transcription should not be confused with translation, which means representing the meaning of a source-language text in a target language, or with transliteration which means representing the spelling of a text from one script to another.