Build Better Audio and Video

Transcripts and closed captioning

Content creators need to proactively create multimedia in an accessible manner by including both transcripts and closed captioning. Having both may seem redundant, but each fulfills different needs. For instance, a video with flashing content can cause serious issues for people who suffer from epilepsy or migraines. The transcript becomes the tool that provides the content for this video. Here is a demonstration of how to activate transcripts within YouTube videos.  

Audio Description

Audio descriptions are popular for enjoying movies and television shows— they help turn the video into a full-cast audio drama. However, not all video projects will need audio description. Use them when there are visual-only elements in a video that are not mentioned or described in the main audio track. Here are several examples of video with audio description.

Externally-created multimedia

These requirements also apply to video not created by your library— this is especially important at college and K-12 libraries. If a professor wants to use a library video for their students that lack these descriptive tools, such as an old VCR tape, we have a choice— we can either create the descriptive tools or suggest alternative resources. This is a common occurrence. As such, many colleges have accessibility offices which create captioning and transcripts. The bottom line is that all students enrolled in a course must be able to access course material and should be able to do so at the same time.

Additional tips

• The link to the transcript should be easily identifiable and adjacent to the video.
• Keep locally created video tutorials short and to the point.
• Closed captions should reflect all sound that conveys content. This includes all relevant background noises and sound effects.
• Ideally, users should be able to control the closed captioning appearance during playback such as captioning color and size.
• Do not use video that automatically plays when the webpage loads.

Accessibility testing tools are not as helpful for multimedia as the captions or transcripts are often embedded from off-site. Thus, manually check each of your videos or audio clips for these content aid features. Here is a checklist for audio-video accessibility from UC San Diego to help with this process.

Build a simple video transcript button

If a transcript overloads your page with information, you can use the <details> element to create a simple show/hide transcript button.

Copy this code snippet for a head start...

<details>
<summary>Video Transcript</summary> 
.   .         <p>TRANSCRIPT HERE. You can use basic HTML in this section including divs, paragraphs, and lists.</p>
</details>

Details about the <details> element 

Properly title your video embeds

When you copy a website embed code from YouTube or other video service, the code often lacks a proper title to be announced when a person using assistive tech encounters the video. By default recent YouTube codes simply say title="YouTube video player" — adding the video title or purpose to the title attribute will immensely help your reader understand the video in advance of playing. 

Here is an example of a title attribute for an ALA video in The Secret Lives of Librarians series on YouTube.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Aacte9Gf02w?si=b5f52EMxTmozi14U" title="YouTube video of The Secret Lives of Librarians with Diana Haneski" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

• Multimedia accessibility FAQ
• Audio Description Examples