Video and multimedia

Can everybody access your multimedia content?

Why it’s important

Eric is hard of hearing and cannot rely on audio.
Sabina is a non-native English speaker and has difficulty understanding video.
Rob is watching a video but cannot listen to the audio due to being in a public space.

- A person who is blind, has other disabilities or prefers not to watch the video will still be able to get all the information in text form.
- A person accessing a transcript with assistive technology may be able to get the same content in less time than listening to the actual audio content. Experienced screen reader users may increase their reading speed to a pace much faster than we speak.
- Transcripts can be helpful to everyone. For example, when people don't want to watch the video they may scan a transcript to get information they want.
- Transcripts make videos more searchable. Video content in text form is better indexed by search engines.

Check that captions are synchronized to about the same time that they would be heard in the audio. Accurate captions must be provided, auto-captioning or auto-transcript options can be unreliable.
Captions do not need to be a word-for-word version of the audio, but should be a concise equivalent.
Link video or audio transcripts from the same place you link to or display your video or audio file.
Avoid flashing colours in your videos. Video content with more than three flashes within a period of 1 second can trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy.
Check that any text within video content is legible from the background with good colour contrast.
If displaying text on screen, ensure the font size is large enough and text is on the screen for long enough to read.
Provide an audio description for important information visually shown on screen.

Last modified: 3 November 2021