Best Practice 1.9 – Provide description for prerecorded videos (Baseline level*)

When a video with audio is viewed using a mobile application, a person with visual impairment can hear the audio but cannot see the picture. As a result, that person can have access to part of the information only. In fact, it should provide additional description that explains what is happening in the video. To a higher level of accessibility, an audio description of the video should be provided to describe the actions, characters, scene changes, and on-screen text that are important but are not described or spoken out in the main sound track.

* To attain the Baseline level, mobile applications are required to adopt any of the best practices in 1.9, 1.10 and 1.11.

Before Rectification This example shows a plain video without any alternative means to aid persons with visual impairment in understanding the content of the video in full.

After Rectification An additional description that explains what is taking place in the video should be provided so that persons with visual impairment can understand the video contents by using screen readers.

W3C WCAG Reference: 1.2.1 Audio-only and Video-only (Prerecorded), 1.2.5 Audio Description