• 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="/tutorials/branching-logic.mp4" controls>
  <track kind="descriptions" src="/tutorials/branching-logic-ad.vtt" srclang="en" label="Audio description">
</video>
<!-- AD cue starts at 00:00:05.000, overlapping the narrator's own line
     (00:00:04.000-00:00:09.000), even though a clear 3-second silent
     pause exists at 00:00:10.000-00:00:13.000 -->

Why it matters

A blind survey designer hears the description talking over the narrator's own explanation, garbling both, when a perfectly good silent pause a few seconds later was never used.

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

Fit audio descriptions into a video's existing pauses whenever possible, rather than layering them over dialogue that's still playing.

<video src="/tutorials/branching-logic.mp4" controls>
  <track kind="descriptions" src="/tutorials/branching-logic-ad.vtt" srclang="en" label="Audio description">
</video>
<!-- AD cue retimed to 00:00:10.000-00:00:12.500, fitting inside the
     existing silent pause instead of overlapping dialogue -->

Outcome

A blind survey designer hears each description clearly in the gap between narrated steps, with nothing talked over.

Who is affected

Blind and low-vision users relying on the description track get two voices competing at once and lose the narrator's actual instructions.

Learn more

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