Accessible Multimedia

Multimedia enriched content should be made as accessible as possible, helping all users engage with and understand the material. These guidelines recommend best practices for structuring and presenting content to meet high accessibility standards and promote inclusivity.

Accessible Content

Key Guidelines

Accurate Captions

Provide accurate captions for all video content. Captions should include dialogue, as well as relevant sounds and music cues.

Synchronized Captions

Ensure captions are synchronized with the audio, so they appear at the same time as the spoken words and sounds.

Detailed Transcripts

Provide transcripts for all audio content, such as podcasts and audio interviews. Transcripts should include all spoken content and relevant sound descriptions.

Accessible Formats

Make transcripts available in accessible formats, such as HTML or accessible PDFs.

Descriptive Audio

Provide audio descriptions for video content to describe important visual elements that are not conveyed through dialogue. This helps users with visual impairments understand the content.

Separate Audio Track

Offer a separate audio track with descriptions or integrate descriptions into the main audio track.

Captioning and Transcription

Use Panopto's built-in tools for automatic speech recognition (ASR) to generate captions and transcripts. However, ASR captions are typically only 60-70% accurate, and they can be impacted by poor-quality audio. Edit these for accuracy to ensure they meet accessibility standards.