Captions and subtitles enable users with auditory impairments to understand what’s being said in a video - but what about users who have a visual impairment?
They’ll be ok with the dialogue in the video but any elements of the video which are visual-only and are not talked about in the video will be inaccessible to them.
In order to make these elements accessible to users with visual impairments, you need to include an audio description which describes and gives context for essential visual information.
The simplest way to add audio descriptions is to talk about any visual elements as you make the recording.
If you’re describing the visual elements anyway (in sufficient detail), then you don’t need to do anything else.
However, if you’d normally just show the image or video clip without saying much/anything about it, then you need to talk about it. Describe the Mona Lisa or the sword fight. Do so in a sufficient level of detail such that users with visual impairments will gain the same level of understanding and learning as those without.
Audio descriptions can be added to a video after it has been recorded as an additional audio track that describes and gives context for essential visual information.
However, this takes a lot more time and effort as you need to:
- Record the additional audio track – taking care to only speak during the gaps in the dialogue of the original recording .
- Add the additional audio track to your video (in Panopto).
- Edit the video to switch between the original audio track and the additional audio track.
Panopto’s video editing capabilities do not allow you to cut the audio track into bits and splice them in where required. Also, when Panopto switches to the additional audio track the audio and video (i.e. the recording of yourself) are hidden – however, the slide/presentation deck remains visible.
Alternatively, the additional descriptive audio tracks needed can be recorded separately and inserted over a copy of the video using iMovie or similar editing software, but the video would then have to be uploaded additionally.
Hence, we recommend narrating the audio description(s) as you create the video.
Best practice says you should provide two versions of the video - one without audio description (the original) and one with added audio description - and make both available. That way users can choose whichever version they want as people without visual impairments may prefer not to have the additional audio description.
Panopto Support instructions for uploading and swapping between available streams.
Timescales
Note: Under the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations audio descriptions and captions are only required for videos published after 23rd September 2020.