Audio alternative
What to do
A transcript that presents the dialogue and descriptions of background sounds, etc. that are part of the story should be provided immediately following audio content.
Why it matters
A transcript provides an accessible alternative presentation of audio content for people who have hearing impairments.
Examples of providing an audio alternative
Video alternative
A transcript that presents all the content and descriptions of scenery, actions, expressions, etc. that are part of the presentation should be provided immediately following video content.
A transcript presents the information of video content, including descriptions of scenery, actions, expressions, etc., in an accessible alternative format for people who have visual impairments.
Examples of providing a video alternative
Closed captions
Captions should be provided for audio and video content. Captions include important sounds, as opposed to subtitles which only provide text of the dialogue.
Captions provide a way for people who have hearing impairments to be able to view the dialogue and sounds of multimedia content.
Resources:
- How to Upload a Caption File for a Video (Panopto)
- How to Add Automatic Speech Recognition Captions into a Video (Panopto)
- Automatically Transcribe Cloud Recordings (Zoom)
- Add your own subtitles & closed captions (YouTube)
- VoiceThread Accessibility
- VoiceThread Universal (for screen readers)
- Autocaptioning VoiceThread
- Video Captioning Support
Sound on request
Sound should only play on user request.
The use of assistive technologies like a screen reader can be difficult if there are also sounds playing from web content.
Examples of playing sound on user request
Descriptive labels
Live audio or video feeds should include descriptive labels.
Providing a short label for audio or video feeds ensures that a user can determine what the content is, even if they cannot access it.
Examples of providing descriptive labels for live feeds