Issue
A video that has no captions – or one with auto captions that lack capitalization/punctuation – is inaccessible to those who can’t hear the audio track. A transcript provides a machine-readable version of the video content for people who use assistive technology like a braille reader.
Who’s affected
People who are Deaf/hard of hearing, deafblind people, plus anyone who chooses to watch video without sound (due to environmental factors).
WCAG standard
Guideline 1.2: Alternatives for time-based media
What to do
Captions
When you embed a video in your website, make sure that it has accurate captions that include punctuation and capitalization. If it doesn’t, contact the person who made the video and request them. Or, if you created the video, be sure to add accurate captions yourself. This goes for Tiktok, too!
If you use YouTube or MiVideo and the video is short:
- Upload video
- Request auto captions
- Correct the captions manually, including punctuation and capitalization.
Transcripts
Your video should also include a transcript or a link to a transcript. Download your transcript once you’ve made your corrections.
MiVideo: How to Order, Edit and Download Captions and Transcripts (video 4:21)
YouTube: Go to the video in YouTube and Open the transcript.
Copy the text, paste it into this timestamp remover tool, then paste the output into a text (.txt) or google doc, or ask the content creator for a text transcript,
Then (editors) do one of the following:
- PREFERRED Include it in the page inside an accordion panel below the video
- PREFERRED Paste the text into a google doc, choose “Publish to the web” from under the doc’s File menu link to the web version of the doc from the word “transcript” beneath your video.
- Include it in the page as regular text with the subheading ”Transcript” above it
- Save your text version of the transcript to Google Drive or some other cloud storage space and link to it from just below the video. Be sure to include a link back to your website from the transcript doc!
Recommended tools
- Rev (captioning service for longer audio)
- Communications Wiki Captions & Transcripts
- Ashley Cameron’s timestamp remover