Abstract: A captioning system is provided for providing captions for audio and/or video presentations. The captioning system can be used to provide text captions or audio descriptions of a video presentation. A user device is provided for the captioning system having a receiver operable to receive the captions together with synchronisation information and a caption output circuit which is operable to output the captions at the appropriate timings defined by the synchronisation information. The user device is preferably a portable hand-held device such as a mobile telephone, PDA or the like.