• Success Criterion 1.2.4
  • Conformance level AA

Live Event Streamed With No Captioning Plan at All

1.2.4 — Captions (Live)

Scenario

Setting

A weather app's forecast screen

What’s wrong

A live weather-alert broadcast embedded in the forecast screen streams with audio but no live captions, so the spoken alert details are unavailable to anyone watching without sound.

Example 

<div class="live-alert-stream">
  <!-- No CART or auto-caption service configured on the live encoder -->
  <video src="live://weather-alert-feed" autoplay controls></video>
</div>

Why it matters

A deaf resident watching a live tornado warning has no way to know which counties are under the warning or when to take shelter, since the broadcast has no live captions at all.

How to test

Join the live stream/webinar with sound and check for a live captions option: if none exists, it fails.

How to fix

Live safety broadcasts need a live captioning service, human CART or a monitored automated feed, wired in before the stream ever goes live.

<div class="live-alert-stream">
  <video src="live://weather-alert-feed" autoplay controls>
    <track kind="captions" src="live://weather-alert-feed-captions" srclang="en" label="Live captions">
  </video>
</div>

Outcome

A deaf resident reads the county names on screen and takes shelter with the same lead time as hearing viewers.

Who is affected

Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers during live severe-weather coverage get no access to time-critical safety information.

Learn more

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