Planning Audio and Video Media

in Making Audio and Video Media Accessible

Influences

What accessibility features you provide with your media will likely be influenced by:

user needs and business benefits
governmental regulations and other policy requirements
budget and time constraints

This multi-page resource endeavors to help you know the requirements and encourages you to meet all user needs.

Checklists for Audio and Video

The checklists below cover audio-only content and video content, and pre-recorded and live. They include:

What is required in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standard at Level A, AA, and AAA. (WCAG is explained below.)
What is needed to meet user needs, beyond WCAG. (If it doesn’t have any ‘A’, then it is not required in WCAG.)

The links below go to a web page in this resource with details on understanding and implementing each thing.

Audio-only Checklists

This section covers audio-only media, like podcasts that don’t have video.

Video Checklists

Inform Users When Not Needed

If your video does not need captions (because there is no substantive audio content) or does not need description (because there is no substantive visual content), it’s good to let users know that. Otherwise, they might think that you accidentally forgot to provide it.

Users who need captions will look there, so you can provide a captions file with only the appropriate indication, such as “[background music]”. Or you can provide the information in text with the video, such as:

Provide Both Captions and a Transcript

It is best to provide captions and a separate transcript.

For videos, captions enable people who are Deaf or hard of hearing to see the visual content and read the captions at the same time.

For audio-only, captions enable people who are hard of hearing to get the richness of listening to the audio and fill in what they don’t hear well by reading the captions.

Transcripts are needed to provide access to people who are Deaf-blind and use braille. Also, transcripts are used by people without disabilities, as listed in the intro page of this resource under Benefits to Organizations and Individuals.

Descriptive Transcripts

Descriptive transcripts for videos:

are needed for most videos to be accessible to people who are “Deaf-blind”
meet a wide range of accessibility needs, including for people who have difficulty processing auditory information and people who cannot focus and comprehend auditory or visual information when there is changing visuals
are used by people without disabilities, and benefit your organization (examples are in the intro page under Benefits to Organizations and Individuals)
are easy and inexpensive to develop using captions and description that you already have to meet Level AA

Captions and transcripts use the same text. Once you have one, it’s fairly easy to develop the other.

Other Languages

Translation of the audio into other languages can be provided:

as text, using captions format (called subtitles or interlingual subtitles)
as spoken audio, usually as a separate audio stream (for people who cannot read captions)
as sign language

Project Management

Include specific accessibility requirements in your:

Project requirements - internal and external
Requests for Proposal (RFP) or Requests for Tender (RFT)
Contracts

Here is an example workflow for developing an accessible video, with notes on who develops the material. Links go to other pages in this resource.

Example Workflow and Responsibilities

Address accessibility in video content as the video is planned and produced.
By: Script writers, videographers, producers, and others.
Develop a described version of the video at the same time as the main video, if needed.
By: Usually the same people who produce the main video also produce the described version.
Develop captions for the main video and for the described version.
By: Usually if the video is professionally produced, the producers provide captions. Sometimes when informal videos are developed in-house, captions are outsourced.
Develop a descriptive transcript using the text from the caption files.
By: Often transcripts are developed in-house from caption files.
Implement it in an accesible media player (usually an existing player with good accessibility support).
By: Usually in-house web developers.

Resourcing Accessibility

To help you plan in-house and outsourced work, the pages of this resource include considerations, skills, and tools needed for creating accessible media in these sections:

When planning and budgeting for accessible media, it is often helpful to communicate the benefits to organizations, such as search engine optimization (SEO), better user experience for all, improved customer satisfaction, and more listed in the intro page under Benefits to Organizations and Individuals.

WCAG Standard

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is introduced in a separate resource: WCAG Overview.

WCAG includes requirements for audio and video media at Level A, AA, and AAA. (More info in a separate resource: Understanding Levels of Conformance.) Most media is required by governing policies to meet Level AA — which includes both A and AA listed in the tables below.

Accessibility requirements for video and audio are different based on if they are:

pre-recorded or live
video with audio, video without audio (video-only), or audio-only

The links in the tables below go to a page in a separate resource: Understanding WCAG 2.1.

Pre-Recorded

	Transcript (including auditory and visual content)	Captions	Audio Description (if visual content not in audio)	Sign Language
Audio-only	A 1.2.1
Video-only	A 1.2.1 (transcript or audio track) AAA 1.2.8		A 1.2.1 (audio track or transcript)
Video with Audio	AAA 1.2.8	A 1.2.2	A 1.2.3 (audio description or transcript) AA 1.2.5 AAA 1.2.7	AAA 1.2.6

Live

	Transcript	Captions	Audio Description	Sign Language
Audio-only	AAA 1.2.9 (live stream or accurate transcript when live)
Video-only
Video with Audio		AA 1.2.4

More about Standards

To learn more about WCAG requirements for media, see Understanding Guideline 1.2: Time-based Media.

Other WCAG requirements related to audio and video include:

In this resource:
- Accessible Audio and Video Content
- Media Player Functionality
In Understanding WCAG:
- 2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide (Level A) For moving, blinking, scrolling, or auto-updating information, all of the following are true:…
- 1.4.2 Audio Control (Level A) If any audio on a Web page plays automatically for more than 3 seconds, either a mechanism is available to pause or stop the audio, or a mechanism is available to control audio volume…

Your audio and video may be subject to additional requirements, for example under governmental regulations. Some of these are listed in Web Accessibility Laws & Policies.