video-caption

Ensures <video> elements have captions.

Description

Track elements with kind="captions" specified as a property must be present in HTML5 video elements. For hearing-impaired users, the captions must include all audible signals from the video, such as dialogue, musical cues, sound effects, and other pertinent information.

Why is it important?

Users who are hard of hearing have restricted or no access to a video’s content if it lacks a caption. Even if there is a captions track, make sure it includes all of the video’s important content and not just the conversation.

Without captions, hearing-impaired users are able to see everything in the movie but are unable to hear anything. The dialogue, narration, and other crucial sounds that are not spoken by people—such as “dramatic instrumental music,” applause, screams, or other sounds that establish the scene, provide context, or otherwise give meaning to the video—are not audible to hearing-impaired users without a caption track.

Examples

• Success:
  • The kind attribute of the <track> element contains the value "captions"
• Failure:
  • The kind attribute of the <track> element contains the value "subtitles"

How to fix?

Use the track element with caption property to make sure that every video element has a caption. Make sure the caption accurately captures all significant information in the video aspect, such as dialogue, musical cues, and sound effects.

Tags

cat.text-alternatives, wcag2a, wcag122, section508, section508.22.a

References

• WCAG 1.2.2: Captions (Prerecorded)
• Deque University: video-caption
• Accessibility Insights: video-caption
• Evinced Digital Accessibility Knowledge Base: video-caption