Success Criterion 1.2.2
Conformance level A

Subtitle Track Used Instead of a Real Captions Track

1.2.2 — Captions (Prerecorded)

Scenario

Setting

A customer-support live-chat widget

What’s wrong

track element present but mislabeled kind="subtitles" when captions are needed and non-speech info is omitted.

Example

<video src="demo.mp4"></video>

Why it matters

Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers, and anyone watching video without sound.

How to test

Inspect the track element's kind attribute in DevTools: kind="subtitles" implies translation only — if non-speech sound info is needed, this alone fails.

How to fix

Synchronized captions must be provided covering all dialogue, speaker identification, and important sounds.

<video src="demo.mp4">

  <track kind="captions" src="captions-en.vtt" srclang="en" label="English">

</video>

A <track> element with kind="captions" surfaces synchronized text for dialogue and important sounds.

Outcome

On a customer-support live-chat widget, this barrier is gone for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers — they no longer have to work around this.

Who is affected