1.2.3 Audio Description or Media Alternative (Prerecorded)

What does it mean?

Many videos show important information only visually: text on screen, actions, or a product being used. People who cannot see the picture miss this. At level A you can solve it in one of two ways: an audio description that narrates the important visual details, or a full text alternative that describes both what is said and what is shown.

If all important visual content is already spoken in the soundtrack, no extra description is needed. The exception for media that is clearly labelled as an alternative to text on the page also applies here.

Who does it help?

• Blind people
• People with low vision who cannot make out details in the video
• People with cognitive disabilities who benefit from a text version

Common failures

• A tutorial where the speaker says "click here" while the screen shows where, with no description
• Key facts such as prices or phone numbers shown only as on-screen text
• A text alternative that contains only the spoken words and leaves out the visual action

How we test it

• evidence Evidence: our scanner collects material such as screenshots, lists and measurements.

Test question: Is visual information in videos available as audio description or full text alternative?

A person decides every criterion. No criterion ever passes automatically.

How to fix it

<video controls src="setup.mp4">
  <track kind="captions" src="setup.en.vtt" srclang="en" label="English">
</video>

<video controls src="setup.mp4">
  <track kind="captions" src="setup.en.vtt" srclang="en" label="English">
  <track kind="descriptions" src="setup.desc.en.vtt" srclang="en" label="Audio description">
</video>
<p><a href="/guides/setup-text">Full text version of this video</a></p>

A text alternative covering both speech and visual action meets the requirement; a description track helps players that support it.

Practical tips

• Plan videos so the speaker naturally says what is on screen; this often makes extra description unnecessary.
• Browser support for description tracks is limited, so a separate described version or a text alternative is the safer choice.

Guides and patterns on this

• Accessible video: captions, audio description and the playerA video only reaches people who can both see and hear it, unless you add captions, audio description and a player everyone can use. This is what WCAG asks for.

Official source

Understanding WCAG 2.2 at the W3C: 1.2.3 Audio Description or Media Alternative (Prerecorded)