Understanding Video Accessibility

Video accessibility in the context of our university setting is the ability for everyone, including individuals with disabilities, to use and understand online videos in order to:

• access information;
• interact with others in our academic environment; and
• undertake activities conducive to learning and discovery.

Videos can be made accessible if content providers:

• utilize accessibility best practices when creating videos;
• properly insert videos into websites;
• provide a transcript, audio descriptions, and captions

Following are considerations for optimizing video accessibility.

Video player

The video player should allow users to:

• Control the video (e.g. pause, rewind, etc.) via the keyboard only*;
• Control the volume with the keyboard only*;
• Control when the video begins (ideal), or if it begins automatically, provide the viewer a mechanism to pause the video at the beginning of the page;
• Turn on captions or audio descriptions with the mouse only; and
• Turn on captions or audio descriptions with the keyboard only.

*All functionality of the content is operable through a keyboard interface without requiring specific timings for individual keystrokes. This does not forbid and should not discourage providing mouse input or other input methods in addition to keyboard operation. See "Understanding SC 2.1.1" (W3C.org) for further explanation.

Captions

Video captions should:

• Appear at the same time as the sound they are captioning;
• Ensure all important audio information has been captured;
• Appear on the screen for enough time for them to be read;
• Ensure the contrast between background and caption text color is sufficient;
• Have no periods without captions; and
• Attribute speech to a particular speaker.

See "DCMP Closed Captioning Standards" (3Play Media) for recommendations and guidelines.

Transcript

Video transcripts should:

• Identify the name of the speaker;
• Ensure that all speech content is included;
• Include relevant information about the speech;
• Include relevant non-speech audio;
• Include any textual or graphical information shown in the video;
• Be provided in an accessible format;
• Indicate the end of the transcript if on the same page as the video; and
• Provide a mechanism to return to the video if on another page.

Audio Descriptions

It should be noted that audio descriptions are best done when creating the video as an alternative to the original video.

Video audio descriptions should:

• Adequately describe the visual information;
• Not impinge on other speech or important sounds;
• Be concise but sufficiently explanatory; and
• Be sufficiently distinguishable from other speech.

Page content modified from Video accessibility principles (Accessibility Oz)