Provide a version with extended audio descriptions
Some videos have nowhere to put a description. The dialogue runs from end to end, and the gaps that do exist are too short to say what just happened on screen. G8 is the blunt answer to that. Publish a second version that freezes the picture while the narrator speaks, then lets it play on. W3C counts this as sufficient for the audio-description rules with a condition attached, which is that it is sufficient using a more specific technique. G8 names the strategy and something concrete has to deliver it. And an extended-description version runs longer than the original, which is the first objection a production team raises. The honest answer is that yes, it does, and the running time is the price of the content being complete.
How we find it in an audit
First we work out whether extended description is needed at all, which means watching for visual information the soundtrack never covers and then timing the pauses in the dialogue to see whether any of them could hold the words. Where an extended version already exists, a reviewer plays it right through. The video has to genuinely halt, the description has to carry the information that was missing rather than a summary of it, and the two versions have to be linked from each other so a viewer landing on either one can reach the other.
How affected users experience it
A blind viewer watching a training video hears continuous speech and learns nothing about the screen being demonstrated. Standard description cannot rescue it, because there is nowhere to put the words. Extended description costs everyone a longer running time and gives that viewer the thing every sighted viewer already had, which is the content of the picture. Anyone who prefers the shorter cut can play the standard version, so nothing is taken away from anybody.
Passes vs. fails
Passes
A second version pauses after each step while the narrator describes the screen, then plays on. Each version links to the other.
Fails
A software demo narrates over continuous speech, so the clicks and the screens being shown are never described at all.
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
- Video element visual content has strict accessible alternativeA 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.
- G58sufficientPut the media alternative link beside the media
- 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 G8: Providing a movie with extended audio descriptions. 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.