Provide a full transcript of the media
Not a caption file, and not a list of what got said. G69 asks for a document telling the same story the video tells, in the same language, which W3C describes as close to a screenplay. Dialogue, the sounds that carry meaning, the setting and its changes, and what people do and show on their faces, all in order. W3C counts it as sufficient for the audio-description-or-media-alternative rule at Level A, using a more specific technique, and a site that ships one has met the Level AAA media-alternative rule at the same time. It pairs with the technique that places the link, because a transcript nobody can find does no work. Captions are a different thing. Captions carry dialogue to somebody who is watching. A transcript carries the whole video to somebody who is not.
How we find it in an audit
A reviewer plays the video with the transcript open beside it and checks four things in order. That the dialogue matches, that the sounds carrying meaning are described, that the setting and its changes are there, and that what people do on screen is written down. Auto-generated caption text repackaged as a transcript fails on the last three every single time, and it is the most common thing we find here. Where the transcript lives on its own page, we test the route back as well.
How affected users experience it
A deaf reader working from a transcript gets the demonstration as well as the words, which is exactly what captions cannot give them. A blind reader gets the visual content no soundtrack ever described. And a transcript pays out well past disability. Anyone in an open-plan office, anyone on a train, anyone who reads faster than the video plays, and every search engine indexing the page. It may be the accessibility fix with the widest audience outside its own audience.
Passes vs. fails
Passes
A document interleaves dialogue and description. Maria clicks Export, a format dialog opens, and then Maria says to choose CSV.
Fails
The transcript links to raw caption text with no speakers and no visuals, so the demo's on-screen actions are simply absent.
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 when it is implemented through a more specific technique, so the condition is part of the test rather than a footnote to it.
- G8sufficientProvide a version with extended audio descriptions
- G58sufficientPut the media alternative link beside 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 G69: Providing an alternative for time based media. 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.