Summary
This article is for university faculty, staff, and students to create and share accessible video and audio content, including best practices, training, and how-to documentation.
Body
Overview
This article is for university faculty, staff, and students to create and share accessible video and audio content. It explains why video and audio content may pose accessibility challenges and provides best practices and how-to documentation to help video and audio content meet digital accessibility standards.
Making Video and Audio Content Accessible
It is required that all digital content meets digital accessibility standards. Videos and audio content rely on sound and visuals that some users cannot perceive. Without captions, transcripts, or audio descriptions, users may miss critical information needed to fully understand the content. Accessible media supports all users, including those with hearing loss, non-native English speakers, and people using content in varied environments.
Best Practices
- All videos must have accurate captions (95%+ accurate). Captions should clearly reflect the spoken content, include relevant sounds and speaker identification when necessary, and follow correct grammar and punctuation. Auto-captions are a helpful starting point but must always be reviewed, edited and corrected.
- Unedited captions don’t meet digital accessibility standards.
- Audio-only content must have a transcript. The transcript should represent all spoken words and important audio cues.
- Include audio description for videos with important visual information. Audio description is an additional narration track that describes key visual elements—such as actions, scene changes, text on screen, and facial expressions—so that people who are blind or have low vision can fully experience the content.
- Example: During a silent moment in a training video, the narrator might say: "A woman in a blue jacket unlocks the lab door and flips on the overhead light."
- For promotional or instructional videos, include a written summary or transcript of what’s said or shown.
- Kaltura MediaSpace is the recommended video hosting tool available to all students, faculty, and staff. It provides automatic captions and transcripts that can be edited for accuracy.
Training
Still Need Help?
IT Solutions primarily supports digital accessibility for academic and course-related materials including document accessibility, captioning and transcription services. Support for other content may be available if time allows, with costs applying to non-course materials. Submit a ticket to request IT Solutions services