Issue of the week – Videos

During the past week, we produced over 150 pages of audit results for multiple companies. One area we consistently saw difficulty was videos. The first thing we noticed is that companies are producing high-quality videos with great content. The second thing we noticed is that most videos are not ADA compliant and accessible so they are invisible to many disabled users.
There are two key WCAG 2.0 guidelines that govern the proper development and coding of videos to ensure they are accessible to everyone. They are:
Guideline 1.2.2. – requires that a video contains captioning for hearing-impaired users. It also requires that an alternative to the video is available. Without captioning or an alternative, some disabled users cannot understand the video which results in an inferior website experience for these users. Put simply, videos lacking basic captioning make it difficult for some disabled users to follow and understand the video.
Guideline 1.2.5 is a Level AA guideline. The intent is to “provide people who are blind or visually impaired access to the visual information in a synchronized media presentation.” Visually-impaired and those with cognitive limitations who have difficulty interpreting visually what is happening benefit from an audio description of visual information.
Approximately 99% of the videos we found did not contain the basic captioning or text description let alone the stricter guideline of providing synchronized audio.
Companies investing in high-quality video need to take the next step and ensure they are accessible.  The CDC reported in 2015 that 22% of adults in the U.S. have some type of disability. Investing additional time to ensure everyone can gain from your video contact makes business sense and it is the law.
#A11y #ADA #Compliance #Disabled #Website #TitleIII #Section508 #WCAG2 #CDC