Multimedia
In this section, we provide recommendations to guide your inclusion of accessible multimedia content.
What Is Multimedia?
Multimedia includes: videos, audio, animations, slideshows
File types: .mp3, .mp4, ppt., etc.
Before You Begin
What Type of Multimedia Are You Including?
Before you can determine what you need to do to make media materials accessible, you need to understand what is required for different types of multimedia. Consider the following questions:
1. Does your multimedia resource include audio narration or instruction? If so, you should:
- Provide a complete transcript of all speech content and relevant non-speech content in the resource.
2. Does your multimedia resource include audio that is synchronized with a video presentation? If so, you should:
- Provide captions of all speech content and relevant non-speech content in the resource.
3. Does your multimedia resource include contextual visuals (e.g., charts, graphs) that are not addressed in the spoken content? If so, you should:
- Provide audio descriptions of relevant visual materials in the resource.
Who Are You Doing This For?
This work supports students who:
- Are deaf or hard of hearing
- Are blind or have low vision
- Have a form of cognitive disability
- Are in a location where they cannot play or hear audio
- Are not native-English speakers and need written-word formats to support understanding
What Do You Need To Do?
Transcripts
Consider what your students would get out of your multimedia resource if they were not able to hear the audio portion, or if they had difficulty understanding what was being said. A text transcript provides students with the equivalent information of the audio content (W3C, 2008).
As you work on developing your text transcript, keep in mind the following recommendations about what to include:
- Speaker’s name
- All speech content: If there is speech that is not relevant, it is usually best to indicate that it has been excluded from the transcript. For example: “[A & B chatted while slides were loading].”
- Relevant descriptions about the speech: Descriptions that convey emotions, mood, etc. are usually provided in brackets. For example: “Don’t touch that! [shouted].”
- Descriptions of relevant non-speech audio: These are usually provided in brackets. For example: “[metal pipes crashing to concrete floor].” Background noise that isn’t relevant can be left out.
- Headings and sub-headings: Where they will make the transcript more usable or easy to navigate, headings and sub-headings can be helpful aids, especially when the transcript is long. When including these, put them in brackets to show that they were not part of the original audio. For example: [Introduction]; [Group Discussion]; [Case Study].
Transcripts and third-party videos
If you are not producing your own video resource but are planning to embed video materials from a third-party source (e.g., YouTube), be aware that not all third-party sources include transcripts. While s