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Re: Facebook Page Cover Video

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From: Chagnon | PubCom
Date: Jul 12, 2017 12:29PM

The short answer, don't do it!

Whenever this type of issue comes up with all social media, I keep wondering when someone in our community is going to sue the pants off these billion dollar behemoths to force them to come into compliance with accessibility laws.

DOJ is testing the waters of "public spaces" on the internet (such as the Winn-Dixie claim), but individuals and/or organizations can launch proceedings against them and not wait for DOJ. All social media have been skirting the accessibility issue since their inception. They give us a little lip service, and even smaller actual accessibility features or access.

I know people who work for these companies. I don't advocate litigation, but these folks tell me that accessibility won't be on the corporate radar until there is a major lawsuit.

When when when?

--Bevi Chagnon

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of James Crone
Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2017 1:53 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: [WebAIM] Facebook Page Cover Video

Facebook recently introduced a feature for pages where the cover image could be a video instead of a static image. This appears to fail WCAG criterion 2.2.2 as the "motion" lasts longer than five seconds (Facebook requires these videos to be greater than 20 seconds) and there is no ability to pause the video.

One of our departments has requested that we help them update their page so that the cover image is now a video. I would classify this request as more of wanting to take advantage of the new video option just to have the latest/greatest since it is available rather than it being appropriate.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this particular topic? I an also interested in potential liability issues we may have if we go the video route that is not compliant rather than staying with a static image. I realize it is Facebook and we don't have full control over the platform like we do on our website. However, something feels wrong if you knowingly contribute content to a site (ie: Facebook) that then makes the page non-compliant with WCAG when you have an institutional policy stating that we adhere to WCAG at the AA level.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and input.

Best,
Jim

*Jim Crone*
*Executive Director of Digital Marketing and Communications* *and Electronic Information Technology Accessibility Coordinator*