Videos & Multimedia
Video content is considered the most engaging content on social media and websites, so it is important to make sure they are accessible to all your users to increase your engagement. Video content is treated like a full electronic and information resource (EIR) product. It should conform with all WCAG 2.0 requirements.
The most common requirements involved in making videos and multimedia accessible include:
- Providing transcripts and/or closed captioning for individuals with hearing impairments and disabilities.
- Providing audio descriptions for individuals with vision impairments and disabilities.
- Avoiding flashy visuals that may cause seizures.
- Use good color contrast and legible fonts
- Use color in combination with shapes and or text when color is an indicator
Hosting Audio and Video Content
Important: Please contact Digital Learning and Academic Innovation (DLAI) (formerly ODELT) or Web Services about appropriate locations for hosting your audio and video files for use in online learning or a website.
Per TAC 206.70, having trouble loading a page, document, or content (e.g. audio, video) is now a criteria for accessible content, and it makes sense. If you are out in a rural area but need access to content, you (or your device) will more than likely give up if the content does not load, rendering you unable to "access" the content.
Audio and video files are typically large files. If you want to watch or listen to one, you have to download it first. That is the problem for non-streaming servers, like placing a video directly on this website. It is not set up to handle people trying to access large files, nor simultaneous access to large files. The more people who attempt to access these files, the more stress on the bandwidth for the website, slowing services down for everyone. When people have to wait too long for content to load, they give up. When everyone has to wait too long for content to load, a website is no longer accessible to the community.
Servers dedicated to streaming audio and video files reduce these load-time issues. Streaming allows people to download as they go: they can download a portion and view it while the rest of the file is downloading in the background. These servers specifically manage the traffic of all these people wanting to view large files. Common ones include YouTube and Mediasite.