• Success Criterion 1.2.2
  • Conformance level A
  • W3C reference F8

Captions That Skip Dialogue or Important Sound Effects

1.2.2 — Captions (Prerecorded)

Scenario

Setting

A hotel booking site's room-selection page

What’s wrong

Captions exist but leave out some spoken dialogue or important sounds (music, alarms, applause) — deaf users get an incomplete version.

Example 

00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:15.000
Welcome to our Deluxe King room.

00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:21.000
As you can see, the bathroom has a walk-in shower.

REM Missing caption for: "Just a heads up, the mini fridge does hum a
REM little at night," and the alarm-clock beep demo.

Why it matters

A deaf traveler picking a room to avoid noise never sees the caption about the fridge hum, so they book a room expecting silence and get a rude surprise at 2 AM.

How to test

Play the video with captions on and pause every 20-30 seconds: check every line of dialogue and every meaningful sound effect is captured — missing any fails.

How to fix

Captions must include every spoken line and every meaningful sound, not just the highlight dialogue.

00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:15.000
Welcome to our Deluxe King room.

00:00:15.500 --> 00:00:18.000
Just a heads up, the mini fridge does hum a little at night.

00:00:18.500 --> 00:00:21.000
As you can see, the bathroom has a walk-in shower.

Outcome

A deaf traveler reads about the fridge noise ahead of time and picks a quieter room instead.

Who is affected

Deaf and hard-of-hearing guests reading captions miss the noise disclosure and any sound-effect cues that hearing viewers pick up automatically.

Learn more

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