Subtitles and translations as a service, done on your own laptop
Councils, universities and NHS trusts publish accessibility statements that admit, in writing, "some of our videos do not have captions". A free script counts exactly how many on their YouTube channel, so you walk in with that number and a price. Then deliver with a laptop workflow that turns a 10-minute video into about an hour of hands-on work.
- A kit to download: style guide, QA checklist,
srt_check.py, thecaption-gap.mjsbacklog counter, pricing calculator, scoreboard, lead tracker and terms outline - Two lead sources most subtitlers never use: public accessibility statements that admit caption gaps, and a script that counts a channel's uncaptioned videos
- The technical lessons this builds on: Subtitles for any video, Shrink, trim and reformat with FFmpeg and, for translations, Translate letters and documents without uploading them
- Any laptop that runs those (8GB of RAM is enough). The kit's checker runs anywhere uv or Python does, and the backlog counter needs Node.js ↗ 18 or newer
- Good written English, a careful eye, and headphones. For translations: fluency in the language, or a fluent partner
- About 6 to 8 hours a week for the first month: practice, samples and outreach
Pick who you'll caption for, and what it takes
There's a real gap between free auto-captions and captions people can rely on. Know exactly what it takes before you start.
Plenty of videos still go out with no captions, or with auto-captions nobody checkedYou've seen it: a brand name turned into a random word, a sentence that runs across the whole screen, nothing at all on an Instagram Reel. Whisper on your laptop does the typing in minutes. What people pay for is the part after: every word checked against the video, names spelled right, lines short enough to read, files that upload first time.
It matters to more people than you'd think. The BBC's subtitle guidelines ↗ say around 10% of broadcast viewers use subtitles regularly, rising to 35% for some online content, and most of them aren't hard of hearing. RNID ↗ puts the number of people in the UK who are deaf, have hearing loss or tinnitus at over 18 million.
What it takes:
- You're selling what free auto-captions miss. YouTube, Vimeo and Instagram all make captions for free, so your work has to be visibly better: accurate, readable, and files that work first time. That's what the routine in step 3 delivers.
- It's detailed work. Plan on about an hour of hands-on time for a 10-minute video once you're practised, and two or three times that at first. Messy audio, crosstalk and jargon take longer, so price them accordingly.
- Steady outreach finds the clients. Hunter's State of Email Outreach 2026 ↗ report, based on 31 million emails sent in 2025, puts the average cold email reply rate at 4.5%, which is why step 7 shows you how to open with the prospect's own numbers.
- UK rules shape who you contact. Most YouTubers and many creators are individuals or sole traders, and you can't send them unsolicited marketing emails or DMs. Step 6 shows who you can contact, and how.
- Translation needs a fluent reviewer. Machine translation makes confident mistakes, so you only sell languages that you, or a partner, can properly review. Step 4 covers this.
- Accessibility buyers want process and proof. Councils, universities and charities take time to buy and will ask how you work, so the kit's style guide and QA checklist do double duty.
A realistic timelinetwo or three weeks of practice, a few hours a week, to get accurate and quick. Then several weeks of steady outreach before your first paying client; two or three months is normal. The accessibility-statement route in step 7 is the fastest way to shorten that. Everything here is free, so there's nothing to spend upfront.
TipWho this suits: you enjoy proofreading, you can spot "there" for "their" on screen at speed, you can hit a deadline every week, and you're comfortable talking to new people, because half of this job is outreach. Keep your day job while you land the first clients.Who actually pays for captionsPick one group to start with. Your samples and messages get sharper when you do:
- Online course makers. The best fit for a beginner: lots of videos, one speaker, the same style every time, and a clear reason to care (students who are deaf, watching on a train, or don't have English as a first language). Many trade as limited companies.
- Small businesses with video: training videos, website explainers, ads and Reels. They want burned-in captions for social media and proper files for their website.
- YouTube creators and educators. Keen, and their audience notices good captions. Often individuals, so you reach them through public requests, introductions and marketplaces.
- Accessibility buyers. Public sector bodies have legal accessibility duties for their websites and apps (below). So do many charities and universities that count as public sector bodies. Their communications and web teams often need captions for videos they've already published.
What the public sector rules actually sayOnly claim what applies. Under the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 ↗, gov.uk says public sector websites and apps must meet the WCAG 2.2 AA standard ↗. The regulations exempt pre-recorded video published before 23 September 2020 and all live video ↗. So:
- Pre-recorded video a public body published from 23 September 2020 needs captions to meet WCAG (success criterion 1.2.2 ↗, level A).
- Captions are not the whole job. Level AA also asks for audio description of important visual information in pre-recorded video (1.2.5 ↗), and audio-only content such as a podcast needs a text alternative like a transcript (1.2.1).
- These regulations cover public sector bodies. Don't tell a private business it's legally required to caption under them.
CarefulNever tell a client their video is now "compliant" because you captioned it. Say what you did: "captions to BBC guidelines, with speaker and sound labels". Compliance with the whole standard is their call, and often needs other work too.Signs a video needs youWatch two minutes with captions on and look for:
- No CC button at all, or only auto-generated captions.
- Names, brands or technical terms wrong in the auto-captions.
- Reels and Shorts with speech but no words on screen.
- A course preview or sales video without captions (the lessons usually don't have them either).
- Comments in other languages, or a business selling abroad with English-only videos.
- A council, university or charity video page with no captions on a recent video.
TipWrite down only what's public and what you need: who they are, the link, their business contact route and the problem you saw. Don't scrape or buy contact lists. The kit's lead-tracker.csv has the columns, including whether you're allowed to email them.
lead-tracker.csv, each with one specific problem you saw.