Often it is best to use the full name the first time and single name throughout - either first/given or last/family depending on the formality. The following are common practices, not requirements. That will help you know which sounds to transcribe, and which are not needed. Keep in mind that the main purpose is to provide the information that you hear to people who cannot hear the audio.
Generally, you transcribe all speech and relevant non-speech sound (such as: baby cries, fireworks going off, horse hoofs approaching). Ī little about captioning tools is in the Captions/Subtitles page of this resource: Captioning Tools.
More details on options and tools for transcribing are in: Transcripts on the Web, How to get or make transcripts. Plan to spend time correcting automatically-generated transcription. Example of bad automatic captions (that cause a fire) For example, missing just one word such as “not” can make the captions contradict the actual audio content. Often the text does not match the spoken audio - and in ways that change the meaning (or are embarrassing). There’s lots of software and services that provide speech-to-text. You can start with an automatically-generated text file. There is software that can help by slowing down the audio and providing easy pause buttons. That’s usually pretty tedious because you have to stop and restart the audio a lot. You can just listen to the audio and type it up. You’ll probably need to make some minor edits so it’s accurate with the final audio content. In some cases, there is already text available in a script.
This page helps you do it yourself (DIY). If you don’t, please don’t be deterred from providing transcripts or captions. If you have the resources to hire professionals to do your transcribing, that is best. It’s more art than science - for example, it’s not always clear which non-speech audio information to include and how to communicate it in text. Good transcription requires knowledge of which non-speech audio information should be included in the transcription. In Making Audio and Video Media Accessible Summary