Every September 8, International Literacy Day reminds the world that literacy is fundamental to education, opportunity, participation and human rights. Established by UNESCO in 1967, the annual observance calls attention to the importance of literacy in creating more inclusive, just, peaceful and sustainable societies.
In 2026, International Literacy Day marks its 60th anniversary under the theme “Literacy for people, the planet and prosperity.” UNESCO is using the occasion to reflect on six decades of progress while considering persistent and emerging challenges and shaping future literacy agendas in a rapidly changing world. The global celebration will take place September 8–9 in Mexico, with the UNESCO International Literacy Prizes recognizing outstanding literacy programs around the world.
For schools, governments, nonprofits, libraries and organizations working to expand literacy, there is an increasingly valuable tool that can complement traditional reading programs: captions.
Captions turn spoken language into visible language
When we watch a video with captions in the same language as the spoken audio, we simultaneously hear and see the words.
This creates a direct connection between:
Sound → Word → Meaning
For people developing reading skills, that connection can provide an additional opportunity to recognize words, associate sounds with written forms and reinforce vocabulary.
This is particularly relevant for educational videos, children’s programming, public information campaigns, language-learning materials and other audiovisual resources used by literacy organizations.
Importantly, captions should not be viewed as a replacement for formal literacy instruction. Instead, they can be a supplemental literacy tool that provides additional opportunities for reading practice in an engaging, familiar medium.
Research shows a connection between captions and literacy
There is growing research demonstrating the potential of captioned audiovisual content to support reading and comprehension.
One particularly important example comes from India. UNESCO’s Institute for Lifelong Learning documents the Reading for a Billion: Same Language Subtitling initiative, which began as a research project in 1996. The approach adds subtitles in the same language as the television program’s audio, allowing viewers to match the written words they see on screen with the words they hear. UNESCO reports that viewers exposed to the program demonstrated significant improvements in reading and writing compared with those who did not have access to same-language subtitling.
Research has also examined the mechanism behind this approach. A 2022 eye-tracking study of 136 weak readers in rural Rajasthan found that 70% engaged in unprompted reading while watching Hindi film clips with same-language subtitles. The researchers concluded that the findings provide evidence that weak readers do, in fact, engage with subtitles while watching audiovisual content.
Another study published in the Information Technologies & International Development journal analyzed five years of same-language subtitling on a nationally broadcast Hindi film-song program. Researchers compared viewers exposed to the subtitled programming with those who rarely or never watched it and found that the subtitled group showed greater improvements across measures of reading and writing skills, with regression analyses confirming a significant effect of same-language subtitling on literacy.
Research involving children has produced similar findings. A study published in the Journal of Research in Reading examined 70 economically disadvantaged second- and third-grade children who watched educational television with or without closed captions. The researchers found that captions helped children recognize and read more words, understand their meanings, make inferences about program content and transfer some of these skills to other reading-related tasks.
More recent research is also exploring captioned video as a tool for second-language reading development. A 2024 study involving 92 Spanish-speaking primary school learners of English found significant improvement in L2 reading skills following a program of captioned video viewing.
Together, these studies suggest that captions can do more than make audiovisual content accessible: when designed and used appropriately, they can create additional opportunities for reading practice and language development.
Captions can support literacy beyond the classroom
Literacy initiatives increasingly extend beyond traditional classrooms. Governments, libraries, nonprofits, public broadcasters and community organizations use video to communicate information about education, health, civic participation, employment, culture and public services.
Adding captions can make these resources more useful for people who are developing literacy skills.
For example, an organization could use captioned video to:
- Provide reading practice through educational and informational content.
- Reinforce vocabulary and word recognition.
- Help learners connect spoken language with written language.
- Make educational videos more accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
- Support language learners through audiovisual context.
- Create reusable learning resources for schools and community programs.
- Make public information easier to follow for audiences with different literacy levels.
- Provide opportunities for independent reading practice outside formal instruction.
Captions can therefore become part of a broader digital literacy and lifelong learning strategy, particularly as organizations increasingly deliver educational content through video.
Captions and endangered language preservation
The relationship between captions and literacy becomes even more significant when considering minority, Indigenous and endangered languages.
For languages with limited written resources, audiovisual content can provide an important opportunity to increase the visibility and everyday use of the language. Creating captions in the language being spoken can help establish a written representation of language that learners can see while listening to it.
This can be particularly valuable for:
- Indigenous language education
- Language revitalization programs
- Community language schools
- Cultural heritage organizations
- Oral history projects
- Indigenous media initiatives
- Government language preservation programs
- Digital language-learning resources
- Archives and museums
UNESCO’s work around the International Decade of Indigenous Languages 2022–2032 emphasizes the importance of education, digital inclusion, media and intergenerational transmission in protecting and revitalizing Indigenous languages. UNESCO notes that nearly 40% of the world’s languages are endangered, with most of them being Indigenous languages.
Audiovisual media can be part of that effort.
A documentary featuring speakers of an endangered language, for example, can become more than a record of oral history when captions are carefully created in the language itself. The video can become a resource through which learners hear the language, see its written form and encounter it in a meaningful cultural context.
UNESCO has also highlighted the role of film in Indigenous language revitalization. Its 2026 story about Runa Simi, a documentary about a community-led effort to dub The Lion King in Quechua, demonstrates how audiovisual media can strengthen cultural pride, engage younger generations and expand access to Indigenous languages.
This is an important opportunity for organizations working to preserve languages: putting a language on screen can help put it into the digital spaces where new generations are learning, communicating and sharing culture.
Captions can make literacy initiatives more inclusive
Literacy and accessibility are closely connected.
For learners who are deaf or hard of hearing, captions can provide access to spoken educational content. Research has also found that caption presentation can influence comprehension among deaf students. In one study of deaf school students watching educational documentaries, comprehension was higher at slower caption rates than at a very fast presentation rate, highlighting the importance of thoughtful caption design.
This means organizations developing educational videos should consider not only whether captions are included, but also whether they are accurate, readable, appropriately synchronized and designed for the intended audience.
For literacy programs, this distinction is especially important. Captions need to function as both an accessibility feature and a useful representation of the language being taught or practiced.
From literacy campaigns to digital learning: captions are an opportunity
As literacy initiatives evolve, video is becoming an increasingly important educational and communication medium. Captions offer a relatively simple way to add a layer of written language to that content.
For organizations promoting literacy, the opportunity is not limited to producing new educational materials. Existing videos can also become more valuable learning resources when captions are added.
A literacy organization might, for example, take an existing collection of:
Stories + Interviews + Lessons + Documentaries + Cultural Content
and add accurate captions in the language spoken in each video.
The result is audiovisual content that can simultaneously support education, accessibility, language learning, cultural preservation and literacy development.
Building a more literate, multilingual world
International Literacy Day is an opportunity to recognize how far the world has come—and how much work remains.
UNESCO estimates that at least 739 million youth and adults worldwide still lacked basic literacy skills in 2024, while four in ten children were not reaching minimum proficiency in reading.
Addressing challenges of this scale requires many approaches: quality education, teacher support, accessible learning materials, technology, community programs, language resources and policies that recognize literacy as a fundamental right.
Captions are not a solution to literacy challenges on their own. But research suggests they can be a powerful supplemental tool for reading practice and language learning, while also helping make audiovisual content more accessible.
For organizations working to advance literacy—including schools, universities, government agencies, libraries, nonprofits, foundations and international development organizations—captioning can be a practical way to integrate written language into the video content people already watch and use.
And for organizations preserving endangered and minority languages, captions offer another opportunity: to help languages become visible, readable and present in the digital world.
Supporting literacy in every language
At Amara.org, we believe that access to information and culture should not depend on the language you speak.
As a nonprofit organization dedicated to making video more accessible and inclusive, Amara.org is proud to support organizations working across languages, communities and cultures. Our captioning, subtitling, transcription and translation solutions can help literacy organizations, schools, governments and language preservation initiatives make their audiovisual content more accessible to the people they serve.
Whether your goal is to support reading literacy, digital literacy, language learning, Indigenous language revitalization or the preservation of an endangered language, captions can be an important part of the strategy.
This International Literacy Day, let’s think beyond the page—and explore how video can help people see, hear, learn and preserve language.
Are you working on a literacy or language preservation initiative?
Contact Amara’s Professional Services team at client-services@amara.org to explore how captions, subtitles and translation can help your organization reach more learners and support literacy in more languages!
