• Success Criterion 1.2.2
  • Conformance level A

Burned-In Captions Too Small or Low-Contrast to Read

1.2.2 — Captions (Prerecorded)

Scenario

Setting

A professional networking site's profile editor

What’s wrong

Burned-in (open) captions that are illegible: tiny, low-contrast, clipped by player chrome or crops on mobile.

Example 

<video src="/profile/intro-video.mp4" playsinline></video>
<!-- Captions are burned into the video pixels at 14px white text on a
     light gray background, in the bottom 10% of frame that the mobile
     app's UI card crops off -->

Why it matters

A recruiter watching a video resume on their phone can't read a single caption, since the mobile card crops exactly the strip of video where the tiny white-on-gray text sits.

How to test

Play the video at actual size (not fullscreen) on a small screen: if burned-in captions are too small, low-contrast, or cut off by the player UI, it fails.

How to fix

Burned-in captions should be a last resort; player-rendered captions from a track file resize and reposition safely across devices.

<video src="/profile/intro-video.mp4" playsinline>
  <track kind="captions" src="/profile/intro-video.vtt" srclang="en" label="English">
</video>
<!-- Player-rendered captions replace the burned-in ones, positioned
     inside the safe area with high-contrast text and an outline -->

Outcome

A hard-of-hearing recruiter reads the intro clearly on a phone screen without squinting or scrolling.

Who is affected

Deaf recruiters and hard-of-hearing job seekers on mobile devices lose the captions entirely to cropping and low contrast.

Learn more

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