Text alternative for prerecorded media
Silktide finds the audio and video players on your pages so you can confirm that prerecorded media offers a full text alternative describing everything that is said and shown. Whether such a document exists and truly covers the media is something only a person can verify.
Why this matters
A full text alternative is the most complete accessible version of a video: a -style document that includes the dialogue, who is speaking, meaningful sounds, and descriptions of visual actions and scene changes, in order. It serves people who are deaf-blind, for whom neither nor are usable, and gives everyone a searchable, quotable record of the content.
This requirement comes from success criterion 1.2.8, which applies at - the strictest conformance level, beyond what most organisations target.
How to fix it
Findings from this check are prompts to verify, not confirmed failures. For each player reported:
- Check whether a full text alternative already exists, and that it covers the visual events as well as the words - an ordinary dialogue-only transcript is not enough. If it does, the finding.
- Otherwise, write one: start from the script or a dialogue transcript, then add descriptions of the important visual information in sequence.
- Publish it on the same page as the media, or link it clearly from there.
How Silktide tests this
- Find the video and audio players in each page's own , skipping any elements you have excluded from checking.
- Ignore media that is permanently muted, and media that already includes a
text track (a
<track>element). - Also report links that go directly to videos on known external video platforms.
- Report each remaining player for you to confirm a full text alternative exists - Silktide cannot watch the media or judge whether a document is equivalent to it.
Troubleshooting
How is this different from criterion 1.2.3?
Success criterion 1.2.3 (Level A) is satisfied by either an audio description or a text alternative - see Descriptions or text alternatives for prerecorded media. This criterion, at Level AAA, requires the full text alternative itself.