• Success Criterion 1.2.2
  • Conformance level A

Captions Missing Cues for Music, Applause, or Alarms

1.2.2 — Captions (Prerecorded)

Scenario

Setting

A car-rental site's checkout flow

What’s wrong

Missing meaningful non-speech information: [music], [applause], [door slams], tone indicators where meaning depends on them.

Example 

00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:07.000
Press and hold the red button for three seconds to call for help.

REM The video also plays the actual alarm beep as a demo, with no
REM caption representing the sound itself.

Why it matters

A deaf renter watching this demo has no idea what the alarm actually sounds like, so they can't recognize it later if it goes off accidentally in the trunk.

How to test

Play the video and listen for music, applause, or sound effects that carry meaning: if the captions don't include a text cue (e.g., '[applause]'), it fails.

How to fix

Captions must describe meaningful non-speech sounds in brackets, not just transcribe dialogue.

00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:07.000
Press and hold the red button for three seconds to call for help.

00:00:07.500 --> 00:00:09.000
[Alarm beeps loudly three times]

Outcome

A deaf renter learns what the alarm beep sounds like from the caption description alone.

Who is affected

Deaf and hard-of-hearing renters miss the non-speech audio cue entirely, since captions only cover the narrator's sentence.

Learn more

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