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Re: Question regarding live caption

for

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: May 25, 2021 11:10AM

On 25/05/2021 16:51, Björn Fisseler wrote:
> Dear list members,
>
> last week we ran a live event for the GAAD 2021. Live captioning was
> provided for the whole event using a separate website due to technical
> restriction.
> One participant, who identified as being blind, later complained that the
> captions weren't accessible to her.
> My question is, if we follow the WCAG 2.1, would we have to make the
> captions fully accessible to all? I always thought of captions as success
> criterion for people who are deaf or hard of hearing (see Success Criterion
> 1.2.4 https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/captions-live.html
> <https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/captions-live.html>).
> Though, while there certainly are people who are deaf-blind, I would not
> consider captions an option for blind users. But please correct me if I'm
> mistaken.

I agree, under WCAG, captions are aimed primarily at
hard-of-hearing/deaf users. The assumption being that blind users will
be able to hear the audio and not require captions (and if anything
happens visually that's not conveyed by audio, that's where the
requirement for audio description comes in).

So, technically, even if you had a video with burnt-in open captions
(i.e. they're part of the video track itself, not something separate
like a text container that gets dynamically updated or anything), that
satisfies the captioning requirement for WCAG.

Deaf-blind users would most likely best be served with a media
alternative - a full transcript that includes a written version of all
audio, important/informative audio cues, as well as a description of any
visual-only information that was in the video.

IMO, of course.

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

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