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Re: - Guideline 1.2 – Time-based Media

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Dec 13, 2024 10:09AM

If it's a podcast it needs a text transcript (WCAG 1.2.1)
If it's video with onscreen info (like text or meaningful images) but no
spoken audio (either it's a silent video or just background music) it needs
a text transcript (1.2.1), if may benefit from an audio description as well
(see later)
If it's a video with spoken audio it needs captions (WCAG 1.2.2) as well as
a text transcript (1.2.3) or audio description (1.2.5)

Remember:
Captions are for those who can't hear the audio, so focus on what is said
and quick description of meaningful sound if no one is saying anything.
Text transcripts are for those who don't see the video (and may not hear
the audio either).
Those have to include all the meaningful onscreen info in addition to a
transcript of the spoken audio.
If your video does not have any onscreen info that isn't described in the
spoken audio, your caption file can almost double as a text transcript,
just remove the time stamp info and add speaker identification, if you
have multiple speakers.
If the video has onscreen info not described in the spoken audio, you
follow the same process and hhten add onscreen info to the converted
captions


Notes on Audio description:

If most of the info in the video is in the spoken track you don't need one.
If there is a lot of onscreen info that is not included in the spoken audio
(like meaningful text, images or references) you could resolve that by
making sure your text transcript includes all that info.
A blind user benefits from audio description - someone reading onscreen
text or describing meaningful scenes.
This is particularly useful for videos with text but no spoken audio, or
videos where the spoken track keeps referencing info on the screen, e.g.
"call the phone number on your screen" or "look at the following headlines).
The challenge with audio description is that most web-based players don't
support a separate audio track that users can toggle, so you end up having
to create two versions of those videos, so a text transcript is much easier.


The primary videos that do need audio description is in entertainment,
movies or TV shos. A blind person is not going to bring a phone or laptop
to a movie or open it on the couch just so they can know what's happening
during the 2 hours or so of dramatic music, screaming and goblin death
noises that you experience when watching "Lort Of The Rings - the Two
Towers") film on Netflix (or at the movies).
(and I am a huge fan of the books)

A blind user is not going to have a phone or a laptop on the couch to find
and read a text transcript while watching a TV show, or bring one one the
movies.
That's why NetFlix, Amazon Prime and other video streaming services and
movies have toggleable audio description as a standard offering.

But if people are watching a video on a webpage they can just as easily
access the text transcript.
Not sure it helped much, but hope it helps some. :)
Meryl Evans has a number of articles and blogs going much deeper into this,
and she's a great writer who makes things easy to understand.

On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 11:17 AM Hayman, Douglass < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
wrote:

> Are the examples and guidelines listed at this link helpful for you:
>
> https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/audio-only-and-video-only-prerecorded
>
> Or this may help:
> https://www.washington.edu/accesstech/videos/
>
>
> Doug Hayman
> IT Accessibility Coordinator
> Information Technology
> Olympic College
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> (360) 475-7632
>
>
>