Lesson 15: Audio and Video Alternatives

Background

There are probably more people than you think that rely on audio and video alternatives. Captions and subtitles are far more common today than even 5 or so years ago (although they're auto-generated far too often).

Many people are less aware of other alternatives like transcripts, audio/video descriptions, and sign language interpretation. People who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, deaf-blind, or have difficulty processing spoken language all rely on audio and video alternatives.

They can also be beneficial for people who speak another language, in loud places where audio can't be heard, in quiet places where audio shouldn't be played, for offline use to save data, and they can even have SEO benefits when published directly on web pages.

5-minute action steps

Go to the web page where there is audio/video content and make notes of the following:

• Captions:
  • Does the media player have a CC button or an option attached to a settings button?
  • Are you able to turn on captions? (Sometimes the option is disabled)
  • When you turn on captions, do they show on the media player?
• Transcripts / Descriptions:
  • Does the media player have a transcript option?
  • Is a transcript in the same page and near the media player?
  • Is there a link to a transcript near the media player?

Analyzing the results

Once you've determined whether or not alternatives are available for a piece of audio/video content, schedule some time to review the quality of them. You'll have to watch or listen to the content for some of these checks.

• Are the captions in sync with the sound?
• Is it clear who is speaking?
• Is there punctuation and correct capitalization?
• Is the text correct?
• Are important sounds included? (e.g. clapping, knocking, dog barking)
• Is text content described? (e.g. presentation slides)
• Are other visual elements described? (e.g. a moving graphic that has no text or speech attached)

Share your results

The end goal of this exercise is to resolve the issues you've found. Tracking them in your project management system is a huge step toward that goal. Sometimes we can't fix accessibility issues immediately, but we can always chip away at them over time.

Share the results you've noted today with the person or team responsible for fixing these kinds of issues. You might start the conversation with, "I'm learning about audio and video alternatives, and these are some of my results."