EASY ANSWER: the accessibility option panel is where u turn on/off the various shortcuts on your remote - that’s all it’s for. The actual remote shortcut that toggles between captions on or off (the mute button) is one of them. So in the panel, if you activate “captions” you are actually just enabling that shortcut. If you try to use the shortcut without activating it in the panel, it’ll just keep causing the panel itself to come up with the cartoon guy doing sign language.
I was out of my mind with this. My wife figured it out in about three minutes lol.