Audio Description or Media Alternative

Table of contents

What you need to know

For all prerecorded video files there must be either an audio description or a full text description.

What you need to know

If your video’s sound conveys all relevant information, no audio description is needed.
You may notice there’s some overlap between this success criteria and 1.2.5. That’s because creating an audio description of your video is required by that success criteria as well.
An audio description provides important information (e.g. actions, characters, scene changes) during pauses in the dialogue of a video.
Including a full text description directly below your video is a nice enhancement, but you need to satisfy the audio description under 1.2.5 which means the text description is not required.

Include an audio description with prerecorded videos that convey non-spoken information.

Read the full explanation of success criterion 1.2.3 on W3.org.

Read “1.2.3 Techniques” from W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative for more information about this success criterion.