Accessibility tips for videos

Most videos require captioning. 

You can use the W3C transcript checklist to see if your content requires transcripts and/or captions.

Captions

While the terms "captions" and "subtitles" are often used interchangeably, subtitles do not provide the same information and are designed for different purposes. Subtitles provide a text version of the dialogue only. Subtitles assume an audience can hear the audio but need the dialogue provided as text, too.

For video content with audio, ensure that synchronized captioning is available. While YouTube can auto-generate captions using voice recognition, these are typically not of sufficient quality to be considered equivalent.

Learn more about Captioning Text.

Learn more about captioning from the Office of Digital Accessibility

Transcripts

A transcript is the same word-for-word content as captions but presented separately from the video. It provides a text alternative to the audio presentation and is not synchronized with the audio timeline. A transcript should contain relevant speaker information to distinguish who is saying what information.

Transcripts are not required for videos. However, it's a good idea to include them as some people may not be able to watch the video (for example, if they have bandwidth issues) or may want to convert the text into another language or format.

The screenshot below is an example of one way to present an embedded video and transcript on a page.