Put the media alternative link beside the media
The transcript exists and nobody can find it, so it might as well not. G58 is the placement half of that fix. Put the link to the alternative immediately before or immediately after the media, in the markup and not only on the screen. W3C counts it as sufficient when it is paired with the technique that produces the alternative in the first place, which is the sensible reading, because a well-placed link to nothing is not a fix. Two details ride along with it and both get dropped. If the alternative sits further down the same page, mark where it ends, so a reader knows when to stop and turn back. And if the browser's Back button will not return them to the video, give them a link that will.
How we find it in an audit
We look at where the link sits in the source rather than where it sits on the screen, because those are different questions and only one of them settles this. Immediately before or immediately after the player passes. A transcripts page in the footer does not, however well organized that page is. Then each link gets followed, to confirm it lands on the alternative for that specific piece of media rather than on a list of everything, and we check there is a way back to where the reader started.
How affected users experience it
A blind or deaf user meets the video, needs the alternative, and has to go hunting. Every step of that hunt is a chance to give up, and a link three clicks deep in a help center is several steps. Beside the player, it is part of the same moment. There is a second half people forget as well. Somebody who reaches the end of a long transcript with no marker and no way back has been dropped somewhere unfamiliar, which is its own small failure.
Passes vs. fails
Passes
Read the descriptive transcript sits directly under each player, first thing after the video in the markup, and the transcript links back.
Fails
Transcripts exist, collected on a transcripts page three clicks away from any of the videos.
How this gets tested
The W3C publishes test rules that define what a checker looks for here.
- Video element visual content has accessible alternativeA tool finds candidates, you decide
- Audio and visuals of video element have transcriptA tool finds candidates, you decide
Other ways to satisfy this rule
13 guides on this site are filed under 1.2.3 Audio Description or Media Alternative (Prerecorded). W3C lists this one as sufficient for that rule only alongside G69, so the pair is what passes and neither half does on its own.
- G8sufficientProvide a version with extended audio descriptions
- G69sufficientProvide a full transcript of the media
- G78sufficientOffer a selectable audio description track
- G173sufficientOffer a described version of every video
- G203sufficientDescribe talking-head video with static text
- G226sufficientNarrate visual content within the soundtrack itself
This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique G58: Placing a link to the alternative for time-based media immediately next to the non-text content. W3C publishes its techniques as guidance rather than as the standard, and says so on every one of them. The success criterion is what conformance is measured against, and a technique is one documented way to meet it.