Perceivable · Level A · 1.2.2
Captions (Prerecorded)
Prerecorded video with a soundtrack needs captions — synchronized on-screen text covering the dialogue, speaker changes, and meaningful sound effects — so people who are deaf or hard of hearing can follow it.
- Deaf / hard of hearing
How to recognize it
Play any prerecorded video that has spoken dialogue or important sound effects and check whether a caption track exists — not just autogenerated captions with no review, which routinely mangle names and technical terms, but accurate ones that also mark who's speaking when it isn't obvious and describe meaningful non-speech sound ('[phone ringing]', '[tense music]') when that sound carries information the picture alone doesn't. A video with dialogue and no caption option at all is the clear-cut failure. One narrow exception: a video that's explicitly presented as a media alternative for text already on the page — narrating word-for-word content the page already shows in text — doesn't need captions on top of that, since the information's already fully available.
How to fix it
Add a real, synchronized caption track — `<track kind="captions">` for native `<video>`, or the platform's captioning system for embedded players — and have a person review and correct it rather than shipping raw auto-generated captions. Identify speakers when it's not visually obvious who's talking, and caption meaningful sound effects, not just speech.
Example
Avoid
<video src="interview.mp4" controls></video>
<!-- no caption track at all -->Prefer
<video src="interview.mp4" controls>
<track kind="captions" src="interview-en.vtt" srclang="en" label="English">
</video>