I have very mixed feelings about videos – sometimes they can really make things clear to me, sometimes I would rather read the text myself and save a lot of time compared to watching them from start to end. Sometimes I need to slow them down, but much more often I have to play them at a higher speed. I really think that not every content should be presented in a video-only format. It takes away my freedom and also the freedom of many other people. Some of them may have different disabilities and that’s why videos should be accessible.
Inaccessible videos are the worst for all kind of different people and also for search engines. No captions or auto-generated captions with many errors, poor contrasts in the video itself, poor sound quality or maybe too much music, visual effects that try to shock you and the list goes on. That’s why Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) can again help us to think, plan and also make videos more accessible. Because people invested time and did research for us. But let’s dive into the practicalities first and I’ll try to make them as clear as possible.
It’s about alternatives
Information in video must respect contrast rules as well
Videos are actually pictures, a lot of pictures that are interchanged very quickly. So the contrast of the texts inside these “pictures” matters just the same as it matters when we have other images on our website or in our app that have some text. So please think about the video content in terms of contrasts and colors and also typography. To make this even more valuable – consider that some texts may have closed captions on top of them if they are in the bottom or sometimes in the top, sometimes some video players may also add their logos in one of the corners and that place in the video should also be planned accordingly.
Captions are only the beginning
I will not go into live streaming as I experience that majority of videos are uploaded and therefore not live-streamed. Most of videos can not be planned, of course. Billions of people with their smart phones make billions of videos every minute and I guess that most of them are not planned but more of a spontaneous nature. This also means that we have to do more to make them accessible before we upload them. Captions are not the only thing to make an video accessible. Captions will only cover the verbal part of the video. Persons that speak. Auto-captioning alone is not good enough. Even with perfect speech from a native speaker in English it needs manual corrections. And especially distinction between different speakers. Artificial intelligence or better to say machine learning is getting better and better but still far from good enough to use without manual control and reparation. When speaking in other languages and dialects it gets only worse. I can not estimate when will it be enough but it does not seem to be soon. At least when we also add differences that people of same language groups have and then also add our neurodiversities to the spectrum and it only gets worse. Manual intervention or manual process is the only way to make captions good. And even then can people make mistakes.
Captions are not there only for people hard of hearing or people who are deaf. They can be beneficial for all different sorts of situations as well. People use them when they want to watch the video privately, and sometimes even when the speech is difficult to understand or maybe in a strong dialect. Videos with captions are even said to have positive effects on the engagement. Search engines are still far from extracting the content from the videos, so captions are for sure also useful for them as well, if they are provided besides the video file itself – so called closed captions.
Closed captions are preferable as users can style them in their own way. Sometimes with bigger fonts and better contrasts and so on. They can also be parsed programmatically so a big possibility for search engines and some assistive technologies as well. But sometimes videos also use the “burned-in” captions. Those are called open captions and are a part of the video itself. Some players that does not support closed captions can use those but as they are a part of the video itself they miss a lot on the user customization and are not giving any benefits for search engines and assistive technologies.
Whenever possible – please provide manually checked closed captions that are synchronized with speech and also convey who is speaking when there are multiple speakers. There are more details to take into consideration like number of words per screen, dynamic positioning based on important other elements in the video and so on.
Very often we need to provide audio description
Sometimes videos include important visual parts that are not a part of the speech and therefore not covered by captions. Sometimes persons that are speaking can prepare and also verbally describe the important visual parts. That needs good training, preparations and consistency. Then the captions can cover them and if done consistently we may even get more accessible videos without audio descriptions.
But as mentioned – I estimate that majority of videos out there are very spontaneous and then they need to be narrated afterwards. This means that somebody need to describe what is being shown when it is not a part of the captions. It’s called audio description because we are describing it with additional audio. It is usually additional audio track that is not covering what people are saying but what is in the video beside the talking. Important actions, visuals, sometimes also important gestures and so on. Everything that is not in the captions but is still important for getting the information “out” – for understanding.
Audio descriptions are critical to make our videos accessible to people with degraded sight and people that are blind. To be able to understand everything that is happening beyond speech and dialogs we must provide audio descriptions. They are usually much more difficult to make and unfortunately most of players don’t really support them, so it is definitely not a simple task. But if we want our videos to really be accessible we must provide them. Some people have to depend on those audio descriptions to consume information and without them our videos are not accessible at all.
When we are not recording spontaneous videos and have time to prepare up-front it is best practice to try and describe the visual information with speech and in that way cover it with captions. It makes the video more accessible and if done consistently it can remove the need of audio description and save a lot of time and efforts.
Transcripts are not optional
As mentioned in the opening section – sometimes I prefer to read over watching the video. I can consume the information at my own pace and I can just briefly scan the outline to find the parts I really wanted in the first place.
Some people do not have that choice and need the text format of information. Let’s take an example – a screen-reader user that does not see nor hear – user that is deaf-blind – such an user can not just hear to the video. Can not hear to the audio description. Can not read only the captions and miss on the non-verbal parts of the video. Such user needs to have whole video in text form. Then it is possible to read the video content via their favorite assistive technology, for example screen-reader that outputs to Braille keyboard.
Transcripts are also useful for other users. Users like me, in some situations, user that want more time, users that like to read things on paper, users that need to really zoom in to be able to read and so on. And let me tell you – your favorite search engine loves transcripts as well.
We can take our captions as basis for transcripts and then also add the missing parts from the video. Transcripts must cover every bit of important information in text format – who is talking, what are they talking about and what is visually presented.
So if we think for a second about them – what can we do do make our process more effective? Well if we can have time for preparation we can maybe even make a script that is then followed by the people in the videos and make the transcripts directly from the script. Sometimes that is a bit too much and we do not want to limit the people in the video, so we can maybe convert the captions to transcripts. But please do provide the transcripts. They should not be optional and I am surprised over how many videos out there do not have transcripts or not even something similar to them.
Sometimes you should also provide sign language version
Some people that are hard of hearing or deaf really only prefers simultaneous sign language version of video. Know your audience, ask them if the would prefer it and also make sure that you use the right sign language. I was surprised how many different sign languages there are. Almost every language has it’s own sign language. So when targeting international audiences it really gets complicated. Please do your research on it and especially when sign language is really required for your audience. Awareness is, as always, the first step, but then you also have to understand the differences.
Use special video and audio effects with caution and taste
Fast flashing effects are particularly unpleasant and for some people even dangerous. Avoid any parts of videos or effects that flash more than three flashes within 1 second as those can get some of your viewers into hospital as it is known that people with epilepsy may experience seizures.
Audio effects can also be a problem, especially avoid sounds, music and effects distorting speech but also avoid volume spikes that can shock people that need to hear videos on high volume.
Video player itself also has to be accessible
You can make the most accessible video in the world, with captions, audio descriptions, signed language interpreter and with transcripts, everything checked multiple times and is really a work of quality but if your video player itself is not accessible, then you are potentially throwing away your initial efforts. I will not go into details here but keyboard operation, proper button labeling, zoom-able, customizable captions and so on must also work well.
Further resources
I tried to summarize the basics and add some personal thoughts, but there is much more to be learned about video accessibility. WCAG offers some good guidelines as always, but please remember that there is also a lot more on the subject.
- W3c’s article on making audio and video media accessible (opens in new window).
- BBC Subtitle guidelines (opens in new window).
- Bureau of Internet Accessibility – Checklist for Creating Accessible Videos (opens in new window).
- Photosensitive Epilepsy Analysis Tool (PEAT) – (opens in new window).
