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Re: Captions not in Text-Format

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From: Steve Green
Date: Sep 4, 2022 1:37AM

The WCAG level A and AA success criteria are designed for people who either have a visual impairment or a hearing impairment, but not both. Therefore neither the captions nor the caption files are intended for screen reader users at level AA, so it is not surprising that there is no way to read them. Are there any media players that do allow captions to be read?

At WCAG level AAA, success criterion 1.2.8 requires that you provide all of the visual and auditory information in text form, so there is no need to interact with the media player at all.

There is an issue with regard to SC 1.4.5 (Images of Text) that I had not considered before. Open captions clearly fail this success criterion, but what if closed captions have been implemented in a media player that does not allow any customisation of the captions' appearance? Arguably, the captions are effectively no more than images of text.

Steve