Success Criterion 1.2.5
Conformance level AA
W3C reference F113

Audio Description Track That Ignores Natural Dialogue Pauses

1.2.5 — Audio Description (Prerecorded)

Scenario

Setting

A survey tool's question builder

What’s wrong

The video has natural pauses in the dialogue but the audio-description track doesn't use them to describe important visuals.

Example

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

Why it matters

Blind and low-vision viewers who need spoken descriptions of important visuals.

How to test

Play the video and listen during natural pauses in dialogue: if the audio-description track exists but skips available pause windows to describe visuals, it fails.

How to fix

Use dialogue pauses to describe the important visuals in the audio description.

<video src="tutorial.mp4">

  <track kind="descriptions" src="ad-en.vtt" srclang="en">

</video>

Audio description narrates visual actions and on-screen content during the video's existing pauses.

Outcome

On a survey tool's question builder, this barrier is gone for blind and low-vision viewers who need spoken descriptions of important visuals — they no longer have to work around this.

Who is affected