Issue/Question
When I run a Page Check I get the following Critical Problem:
<video> elements must have captions
Environment
Cause
Final Checks evaluate all code on a page and detect accessibility issues not meeting WCAG 2.0 (Level AA) standards.
It detected the page contains a video lacking captions. With no caption, deaf and hard of hearing users have limited or no access to information contained within. Even if a caption track is available, ensure it contains all meaningful information in the video, not just dialogue. Without a caption track, deaf and hard of hearing viewers do not have a way of knowing the dialog, narration, or essential sounds not spoken by people, such as "dramatic instrumental music," applause, screams, or other sounds setting the scene, providing context, or giving meaning to the video.
Web CMS does not provide a way to add a track to a video through the WYSIWYG editor. The recommended method for adding videos to a page is to host the video on YouTube, then insert the video using a YouTube Embed Component or YouTube Modal Component. These components are maintained by WKU WebDev and guarantee your video is as accessible as possible.
Additionally, YouTube offers automatic captioning that, with some editing, aids in writing captions. Another useful YouTube feature is the ability to synchronize a transcript with the video automatically. You type a transcript, upload it to YouTube, and YouTube processes the video and transcript together using voice recognition to synchronize the transcript with the video.
Learn more about Adding Subtitles & Captions to YouTube hosted videos.
If your department lacks a YouTube channel or cannot create one, please reach out to WKU Web Services to inquire about hosting on the WKU channel.