Audio and video text alternatives

Providing text alternatives for videos and audio files is essential to ensure access for everyone. Text alternatives provide the same information as what is shown on screen and spoken aloud in a multimedia file. In addition to ensuring access for people with disabilities, text alternatives can help people gain a deeper understanding of the material.

Text alternatives for multimedia include captions, transcripts, and audio descriptions.

Captions are a text version of the audio content within a video, synchronized with the action on screen.

A transcript is a text version of media content, most commonly used for audio-only media.

Audio descriptions are additional audio that describes and gives context for essential visual information shown on screen. This can be a separate audio track or part of the main narration track.

Professional captioning

UW–‍Madison negotiated discounted rates with 3Play Media and Verbit. For more information, visit Captioning, transcription, and audio description vendor rate comparison.

DIY captioning

Auto-generated caption tools are increasing in quality and accuracy. Some video hosting services, such as YouTube and Kaltura, support DIY captioning or the inclusion of separate caption files. Some web conferencing platforms allow you to download a transcript or caption file from a recorded event.

Read more about how to apply machine captioning in Kaltura.

The multimedia accessibility guide has full details on approaches to captioning, pricing, and platforms.

• Add captions to your videos through whatever platform you are publishing in
• Create a transcript for audio content
• Describe visual content when recording video narration, or
• Provide an audio description track for prerecorded videos if important visual content isn’t described