Add transcripts or longer descriptions

Many media items such as podcasts and other audio files, videos, complex images like charts and infographics, and other embedded items are not fully accessible. Providing equivalent text alternatives can make media items more accessible. 

Such equivalent text alternatives are likely longer than what you would include in a title or alt attribute. For example, a podcast text alternative consists of transcripts, and complex image, a text alternative must include any visible text and perhaps a description. Here's a approach for providing longer text alternatives:

1. Provide a short description (less than 150 characters) for the title or alt attribute
2. Provide a longer description in the caption, or link to transcripts or a longer description from the caption.
3. Provide transcripts or a longer description either elsewhere on the page or on a separate page.

Use title or alt attribute

Rather than providing a detailed description of an image or other media in the alt text, provide a short description in the alternative text and limit it to 120 characters. For an image, you'll use the alt attribute. For iframes, you'll use the title attribute. 

Use captions 

Use the caption for image or media item to either describe how the item relates to your content or link to a longer description. Using captions gives all site visitors access to the same information.

Alt text explains information in images for screen reader users. Captions describe images to help users relate them to surrounding text. 

-- From the Australian Government Style Manual

Learn more about alt text versus captions

Use a longer description or transcripts 

If you have transcripts or a longer description use a caption with a link to that text.

To add a caption with a link, after adding your media item to the text editor: (See Add images to the media library.)

1. Hover over the media item widget until you see a yellow outline.
2. Click on the widget to bring up the menu.
3. In the menu click on the caption icon. This will display the caption field below the media item.
4. In the caption field add your alternative text and if needed, link to the longer description. See Jump links using ID tags for creating an in-page link.
5. Save

Example: embedded podcast with a link to transcripts

Here's an example of how to make transcripts available for a podcast. In this example the caption contains a link to the transcript, and the transcript is directly below on the page. You can also put the transcript on a different page and link to it there. 

Oceanographer Kristen Davis, an authority on ocean physics and climate sustainability, discusses the growing excitement around seaweed and kelp as tools to combat climate change.

Like trees on land, these underwater plants use photosynthesis to absorb carbon dioxide and convert it into organic matter. When they die, some of that carbon may sink to the ocean depths. However, the science is still evolving and there’s a lot we don’t yet understand about how seaweed farming might impact carbon sequestration. Davis shares insights into the ongoing research and its promise on this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast with host Russ Altman.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Russ Altman: This is Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything, and I'm your host, Russ Altman. As we start the new year, I thought it would be good to revisit the original intent of this show. In 2017, when we started, we wanted to create a forum to dive into and discuss the motivations and the research that my colleagues do across the campus in science, technology, engineering, medicine, and other topics. Stanford University and all universities, for the most part, have a long history of doing important work that impacts the world. And it's a joy to share with you how this work is motivated by humans who are working hard to create a better future for everybody. In that spirit, I hope you will walk away from every episode with a deeper understanding of the work that's in progress here, and that you'll share it with your friends, family, neighbors, co-workers as well. 

[00:00:49] Kristen Davis: The ocean is seventy percent of our Earth's surface, and so, and it is this huge potential carbon sink. Uh, and so a lot of those strategies are thinking, are considering ways to use the ocean. So, seaweed, uh, cultivation is one of those.

[00:01:13] Russ Altman: This is Stanford Engineering is The Future of Everything, and I'm your host, Russ Altman. If you enjoy The Future of Everything podcast, please follow it on whatever app you're listening to right now. That will guarantee that you never miss an episode and you're totally clued in on The Future of Everything.

[00:01:29] Today, Kristen Davis will tell us that seaweed may be part of the solution to carbon dioxide excess in the atmosphere. Turns out the ocean might be able to absorb the CO2 with seaweed, and then we can store it in the long term at the bottom of the ocean. It's the future of seaweed. 

[00:01:48] Before we get started, please remember to follow the show by pressing the follow button on the app that you're listening to and making sure that you never are surprised by the future of anything.

[00:02:04] You know, we've heard about greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, CO2, as a major problem for global warming. And one of the things we're all trying to do is reduce our carbon emissions to try to help with that excess that is currently heating up the planet. But in addition to reducing our production, it would be good to also increase our consumption. Trees are one way that that happens. Trees absorb CO2 and through the miracle, and I do mean miracle, of photosynthesis, they turn it into organic things like sugar, and wood bark, and leaves. Well, guess what? You can grow seaweed in the ocean and it can do some similar things in terms of storing CO2 and turning it into organic matter. That organic matter could then be kept in the ocean, it can be harvested for us to eat, yummy, or many other things. 

[00:02:55] Well, Kristen Davis is a professor of oceans at Stanford University and an expert on the biophysics of oceans. And she's increasingly looking at the interaction of the ocean with CO2. She's going to tell us that seaweed might be the answer, or part of the answer, to consuming more CO2 and ameliorating the problems with global warming and greenhouse gases.

Go to full transcript