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Perceivable · Level A · 1.2.2

Captions (Prerecorded)

Prerecorded video with a soundtrack needs captions — synchronized on-screen text covering the dialogue, speaker changes, and meaningful sound effects — so people who are deaf or hard of hearing can follow it.

  • Deaf / hard of hearing
The problem, in practice — select the image to enlarge it
Two video players showing the same scene of two people talking in a cafe. Left, labeled 'Without captions', has no on-screen text, with a note that people who are deaf or hard of hearing can't access the dialogue or important sound information. Right, labeled 'With captions', shows synchronized captions reading 'HANNAH: I really liked the presentation today. JAMES: Thanks! The Q&A was great. [Background music playing]', with a note that captions show the dialogue, who is speaking, and meaningful sound effects, so everyone can follow along.

How to recognize it

Play any prerecorded video that has spoken dialogue or important sound effects and check whether a caption track exists — not just autogenerated captions with no review, which routinely mangle names and technical terms, but accurate ones that also mark who's speaking when it isn't obvious and describe meaningful non-speech sound ('[phone ringing]', '[tense music]') when that sound carries information the picture alone doesn't. A video with dialogue and no caption option at all is the clear-cut failure. One narrow exception: a video that's explicitly presented as a media alternative for text already on the page — narrating word-for-word content the page already shows in text — doesn't need captions on top of that, since the information's already fully available.

How to fix it

Add a real, synchronized caption track — `<track kind="captions">` for native `<video>`, or the platform's captioning system for embedded players — and have a person review and correct it rather than shipping raw auto-generated captions. Identify speakers when it's not visually obvious who's talking, and caption meaningful sound effects, not just speech.

Example

Avoid

<video src="interview.mp4" controls></video>
<!-- no caption track at all -->

Prefer

<video src="interview.mp4" controls>
  <track kind="captions" src="interview-en.vtt" srclang="en" label="English">
</video>

Resources

  • 1.2.4 Captions (Live)

    Same requirement, different timing: this criterion covers prerecorded media at Level A; 1.2.4 extends the same captioning requirement to live audio-video content, at Level AA.