Key takeaways
- Video and audio need three things to be accessible: captions for people who cannot hear, audio description for people who cannot see and transcripts for anyone who prefers to read.
- The audience for captions is large. The NIDCD reports about 15% of American adults, or 37.5 million people, report some trouble hearing.
- Captions help far beyond that group: in a Verizon Media and Publicis Media study, 69% of people watched video with the sound off in public and 80% said they were more likely to finish a video with captions.
- Auto-generated captions are a starting point, not a finished product. Review them for accuracy, speaker names, punctuation and sound cues.
- The media player needs the same attention as the media: controls must work by keyboard and screen reader, and nothing should autoplay with sound.
| Question | Short answer |
|---|---|
| How do you create accurate captions and transcripts? | Captions should match what is said and include the sounds that carry meaning. |
| What is audio description, and when do you need it? | Audio description narrates important visual information that is not spoken, such as on-screen text, actions, charts or a product being demonstrated. |
| How do you choose an accessible media player? | Even perfectly captioned video fails if the player cannot be used. |
Video and audio on your website are out of reach for deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors without captions, for blind visitors without descriptions of important visuals and for many others when the player cannot be operated by keyboard. Yet the fixes are well understood and often help marketing results. This Emulent guide covers what WCAG requires for media, how to produce captions, transcripts and audio description, how to choose an accessible player and how the work supports SEO. It is general guidance, not legal advice.
What does WCAG require for video and audio?
WCAG 2.1 Level AA sets different requirements depending on whether media is prerecorded or live and whether it has audio, video or both.
- Prerecorded audio only, such as podcasts: provide a text transcript.
- Prerecorded video only, with no sound: provide a text description or an audio track that describes the visuals.
- Prerecorded video with audio: provide synchronized captions and audio description of important visual information.
- Live video with audio, such as webinars and livestreams: provide live captions.
- Audio control: any sound that plays automatically for more than three seconds can be paused, stopped or turned down independently.
- Moving content: video backgrounds, animations and carousels that move for more than five seconds can be paused, stopped or hidden.
- No flashing: nothing flashes more than three times per second.
How do you create accurate captions and transcripts?
Captions should match what is said and include the sounds that carry meaning. Transcripts give the same information in text that can be read, searched and translated.
- Start with automatic captions from YouTube, Vimeo or your editing software, then correct names, brand terms, numbers and punctuation.
- Identify speakers when it is not obvious who is talking.
- Include meaningful sound cues such as [applause], [phone rings] or [upbeat music].
- Keep captions in sync with speech, two lines at most, in readable chunks.
- Use closed captions, which viewers can turn on and off, as the default. Burned-in open captions work well on social video, but keep a captioned file for your site too.
- Upload caption files in standard formats such as WebVTT or SRT instead of relying on the platform’s auto-captions alone.
- Publish a transcript on the same page as podcasts and important videos, including speaker names and descriptions of visual content.
- For live events, use a live captioning service or a platform with human-reviewed live captions for high-stakes sessions.
What is audio description, and when do you need it?
Audio description narrates important visual information that is not spoken, such as on-screen text, actions, charts or a product being demonstrated. A blind viewer of a product demo with no narration otherwise gets only music.
- Plan for it in the script: have presenters describe what they show, such as “This chart shows sales doubling between March and June.” That integrated approach often removes the need for a separate track.
- Read on-screen text aloud, including titles, phone numbers and calls to action.
- For finished videos with long silent visual sequences, add a described version or a separate audio description track.
- Offer a descriptive transcript, which combines dialogue with descriptions of visuals, for videos where a separate track would be hard to produce.
Talking-head videos where all the information is spoken usually need no extra description, which makes them an easy place to start.
How do you choose an accessible media player?
Even perfectly captioned video fails if the player cannot be used. Test every embedded player with a keyboard and a screen reader.
- Play, pause, volume, captions, full screen and the progress bar all work by keyboard and show visible focus.
- Controls have accessible names, so a screen reader announces “Play” instead of “button.”
- The captions button is easy to find, and caption text has enough contrast and can be resized.
- Videos do not autoplay with sound, and background videos have a visible pause control.
- The embed has a descriptive title, so screen reader users know what the iframe contains.
YouTube, Vimeo and Wistia players are widely used and support captions and keyboard controls, though custom skins and page builder video elements can break that support. On WordPress sites, check that background video rows have a pause option and that embedded players keep their native controls.
Accessible media pays off in search, too. Transcripts and captions give search engines and AI answer engines indexable text about your video, supporting your SEO and making it easier for people to find the exact moment they need. Skip overlay widgets as a shortcut; UsableNet counted more than 1,400 lawsuits in 2025 against companies that had them installed. Results vary by content and audience.
How the Emulent team can help
Emulent audits the video and audio on your site for captions, transcripts, audio description and player accessibility, then fixes what is missing. We can set up captioning workflows for new content, add transcripts that support search and replace players that fail keyboard and screen reader tests. Our website design team builds accessible media into new pages from the start. To make your website media work for every visitor, contact the Emulent team.