Provide an auditory description of the important information of the visual track of a multimedia

For users who are deaf or hard of hearing, audio content is not accessible. Videos without descriptions are not accessible to the blind. Provide users the option of either listening to an audio version or reading a text transcript. Always provide a text version of any stand-alone audio files|. If the clip is short, place the text in the link or in the alt tag of an image associated with the link; if the file is long, consider linking to a page that contains the transcript.

For video, synchronize captions or auditory descriptions of the visual track with the presentation

Video| files must have both textual and audio descriptions, while audio files need only have textual descriptions. If you link to an audio file, let the user know the audio file format and file size in kilobytes. Any Images, applets, sounds, video clips, multimedia presentations, etc. need to have text equivalents.

A variety of alternative audio and video tracks are possible using Video formats, such as QuickTime. Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL)| allows you to synchronize media used in multimedia files.

For more information about media formats see the National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM)|. See also W3C's Text equivalents for multimedia| for information about embedding multimedia objects.

If you use sounds to enhance a page, provide text to describe the sound and always give the user the ability to turn the sound off.

Testing

Use Internet Explorer to view the web page with multimedia features turned off:

• From the Tools menu select Internet Options-Advanced
• locate the Multimedia section and deactivate the check boxes next to Play Animations, Play Sounds, Play Videos, and Show pictures by left clicking once in each of the check boxes
• Press Enter or left click OK
• click Refresh on the Internet Explorer toolbar

View the page through a text-only browser, such as Lynx, or text-only browser viewer and listen to the page with a screen reader - note if any communicative content is lost.