This translation has not been editorially reviewed yet. The German version is authoritative. Deutsche Fassung
Accessibility
What is audio description, and when does my video need one?
Audio description is an additional audio track that describes, during the pauses in speech, what's visible in the video. Your video needs it when important information exists only in the picture — such as numbers shown on screen or demonstrated hand movements. Alternatively, for recorded videos, a complete text version that renders both picture and sound together is also sufficient.
Audio description: the narrator for blind visitors
A blind visitor hears your video but doesn't see it. As long as everything important is spoken aloud, that's not a problem. It becomes critical when the narrator says "as you can see here" — and the crucial information exists only in the picture: a diagram, a phone number shown on screen, a demonstrated hand movement. Audio description fills that gap: a narrator briefly describes what's visible during the pauses in speech. For recorded videos, the rule also allows a second route: a text media alternative, i.e. a complete description of the action, picture, and sound, which the visitor can read instead.
How our measurement engine checks the description track
The automated check looks for a description track on every video on the page, downloads the file, and checks whether it contains real entries with timestamps — a mere reference with no content doesn't count. Only if every video file found has a loaded, filled description track does the criterion count as automatically passed. There's a lot the machine fundamentally cannot decide here: whether a video has visual content that needs describing in the first place, whether a text version is complete as an alternative, whether an embedded third-party player brings its own description. The report honestly marks these cases as "manual review" — at the Gold Standard level, a human watches the video and judges.
The simplest route: producing videos that need little description
The cheapest audio description is the one you don't need. If the narrator speaks everything important aloud, the video is accessible on its own. So ask your video production team for a simple rule: everything shown on screen is also said out loud. Instead of "Call us — you can see the number here", it becomes "Call us at 01 234 56 78". Instead of "like this", the narrator describes the hand movement. For existing videos, the text version is often the fastest route: a page that fully renders the content in words, linked directly beneath the video.
Examples
Explanatory video with image information
<video controls src="so-geht-der-antrag.mp4">
<track kind="captions" src="antrag.vtt" srclang="de">
</video><video controls src="so-geht-der-antrag.mp4">
<track kind="captions" src="antrag.vtt" srclang="de">
<track kind="descriptions" src="antrag-ad.vtt" srclang="de">
</video>
<p><a href="/videos/antrag-transkript">Transkript mit Bildbeschreibung</a></p>Subtitles cover the tone. What happens only in the image needs an audio description or a transcript that describes the image.
- Close your eyes and listen to your videos — if you're missing information, blind visitors are missing it too.
- Ask your video production team to also have all on-screen text and numbers spoken aloud.
- Add a complete text version on the same page for existing videos.
- For new videos, plan in pauses in speech that a description track can fit into.
- Link the text version directly beneath the video, not hidden away in the footer.
