• Success Criterion 1.2.4
  • Conformance level AA

Live Captions So Delayed They’re Useless During the Event

1.2.4 — Captions (Live)

Scenario

Setting

A car-rental site's checkout flow

What’s wrong

Live captions with latency so severe they can't be followed against visuals/slides.

Example

A car-rental site's checkout flow shows the problem clearly: live captions with latency so severe they can't be followed against visuals/slides.

Why it matters

Deaf and hard-of-hearing participants in live streams, classes, and meetings. On a car-rental site's checkout flow, this barrier means they are left guessing what the media actually shows.

How to test

Watch live captions against the speaker/slides: if the lag makes them unreadable relative to what's currently being shown, it fails.

How to fix

Readable, reasonably accurate real-time captions must run for the entire live event.

Outcome

Corrected, a car-rental site's checkout flow now lets a visitor understand the image, video, or audio content.

Who is affected

Deaf and hard-of-hearing participants in live streams, classes, and meetings.

Learn more

Related scenarios