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Re: Alt Text vs AD

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From: Mark Magennis
Date: Oct 14, 2022 8:59AM

There's also the practical difference that audio description is embedded into time-based content so the amount that you can provide is constrained by the amount of time you have to say it. For example, suppose you're adding audio description to a movie. One character says something and pulls out a gun then another character says something. In between the two speech fragments you're going to have to provide audio description like "Jesse pulls out a gun". You might want to say more, for instance describing the gun if that's important, but you might not have enough time. With alt text on static images you can provide as much description as you want.

One solution to not having enough time for a full audio description is to pause the video while the audio description plays. You generally can't do that in movies, but for training videos, when the video shows a screenshot of a software product, you might want to give a lengthy description of the UI and you might need to pause the video to allow for that.

Mark