WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Transcript vs. Caption

for

From: John Foliot
Date: Dec 18, 2014 2:56PM

Andrew Kirkpatrick wrote:
>
> John,
> The scenario that I don't think you are covering is if the media is
> just Audio (or just video). In the case of audio-only (SC 1.2.1) then
> a transcript by itself is just fine, and may in fact be preferable in
> that it gives the user the ability to read the content of the audio at
> their own pace.

Yes, sorry in the case of Audio only you are correct.

While I suppose that a video without audio could exist, I think that is
something of a narrow corner-case. In that scenario I believe that the
requirement for 'audio description' remains, and for AA conformance that it
is still an "above and beyond the transcript requirement" (for a strict
reading of WCAG from this end at least). The need for a caption however
would not exist, as the video has no dialog or other important sounds.

Andrew, any thoughts regarding 'video descriptions offered as text' as an
alternative to meeting SC 1.2.5? I've been meaning to follow up on that with
you for some time now :-) - it's tricky because it also presumes that the
non-sighted user (the primary candidate for this SC) can process on-screen
text independent of the media player - a huge assumption to be making I
grant you in advance. Yet I also go back to the PoC that IBM Japan showed at
CSUN 2012, where they built the TTS engine into a standalone player, so...
(Also, if this is too large a discussion for this forum I understand.)

Finally, just in case someone following along is not already aware of this
resource, be sure to check out http://www.dcmp.org/captioningkey/ for great
captioning advice. Also be sure to check out
http://www.icam.k12.in.us/index.php?option=com_content&;view=article&id=142&I
temid=83 for audio description resources.

JF