Audio & Video

If you are using video or audio clips on a web page, there are several criteria to consider, such as captioning and audio description of the video. Audio description is an extra track explaining what happens on the screen to visually impaired users. If you are not able to provide audio description for you videos, then give an alternative in the form of a transcript that is uploaded or linked to from the page. Be aware that without audio descriptions, your site cannot be Level AA-compliant, only Level A-compliant. If the content is solely visual (no sound) or only audio (no visual), then a text version is an accepted alternative on both levels.

/! Strong Recomendation: The AODA Team strongly suggests that instead of embedding a YouTube video, a hyperlinked image of the video is provided with appropriate alt text. The linked image will take the user to the video on Youtube, or onother video sharing website.

The University's position on web video is:

• We have lots of web accessibility problems, and we're prioritizing what we work on.
• We have prioritized web video accessibility near the bottom of the list, and we will get to it someday, but right now we don't have a good solution.

For clients, this means you have choices:

• For a perfectly accessible website, you cannot embed videos until YouTube's flash version goes away.
• If you "image link" to YouTube, captions and transcripts are required.
• You can choose not to post videos at all.
• You can choose to embed YouTube videos knowing your website will not be perfectly accessible, and you will have to get back to it someday, and there may be a cost to do so.