Accessibility finding
Audio and video without captions, transcript or a way to stop them
Accessibility Error Severity: High
Part of the audit Audio and video. Finding id: accessibility.mediaAlternatives.
What it costs you
Some visitors do not get what this audio or video tells, or cannot stop it.
What to do
Add captions to video and a transcript to audio. Do not start media with sound by itself, and keep the player's controls visible.
What it checks
- No captions
- No text transcript
- Sound plays automatically
- No way to pause
How to fix it
Add a caption track and keep the controls
- For a video hosted on a video platform, add the captions on the platform; the embed then offers them.
- For audio, publish the transcript on the same page or link to it next to the player.
- Remove autoplay, or mute the media and keep a visible pause control.
How to check: Recrawl the page: the media is no longer reported.
A real case
Deaf plaintiffs sued Harvard in 2015 because much of its online video and audio had no captions or inaccurate ones. In the 2019 settlement Harvard agreed to caption its online content and to pay the plaintiffs' legal fees of nearly 1.6 million dollars.