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Making videos accessible

To make them available for people with visual and auditory impairments in particular

The minimum measure to minimise barriers in videos is to provide subtitles. This is not only helpful for hearing-impaired people, but for anyone who also speaks another native language or is watching the video in a noisy environment or on the move without headphones.

Seeing sounds, hearing images – Accessibility in video

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“Everything that can be seen must also be heard. And for everything that can be heard, we need a visual alternative.”

Accessible design of videos is particularly necessary when the video is the sole medium for conveying information. If the video “only” serves as an additional means of conveying information in a multimedia format, the extent to which accessibility must be ensured in the video needs to be weighed up. The prerequisite for this is that other media formats are available that are equivalent in terms of content.

However, the provision of subtitles is strongly recommended as a minimum level of accessibility for videos.

Subtitles are provided to visually convey auditory information from the video, such as what is being said or music/sounds relevant to the content, in the form of text.

Subtitles for videos on Panopto (TU Darmstadt's video platform) can be created with relatively little effort using an automatic subtitling function. Depending on the quality of the audio and the technical language used, automatic subtitles are up to 75% accurate and usually require only minor corrections.

Users can also customise the appearance of subtitles (fade in/out, font size, positioning, font/background colour) in the Panopto player, so the creator does not need to have any further knowledge of subtitle design rules.

In order to provide visual information in the form of sound, audio description is provided in the video.

Audio description is generally understood to mean that: When there are visual overlays or certain things shown in the video that provide information that is relevant to understanding the content, ideally there are pauses where the visuals are described verbally by another voice. Alternatively, the video can be automatically paused and the audio description presented.

Where visuals are already described in the video, there is no need for audio description. This could be taken into account during the video production. For example, graphics shown in a slide-based lecture recording that convey content are described and explained verbally by the lecturer. Slide changes are also verbalised.

For videos on Panopto, audio descriptions are relatively easy to create using an audio description feature, at least from a technical point of view. They are written at the appropriate points in the video. The video will then automatically pause at those points during playback and a computer-generated voice will read the audio description.

However, the way an audio description should look (content, wording) is not trivial. Depending on the video, it can therefore be time-consuming to create an audio description. In these cases, consider the following:

  • Can the information in the video also be made available via other media alternatives (e.g. text with embedded graphics that can be output via a screen reader)?
  • Could the effort be all the more worthwhile because it is a video that conveys basic learning content that does not change so quickly, can be used many times and for which the video form is predestined as a media format?
  • Talk to the relevant students about what they need.

Alternatively, other media forms, e.g. a transcript in text form, can be made available in addition to the video. Subtitles can be used to create a transcript, ideally together with audio description.

In the case of slide-based lecture recordings, for example, it is also advisable to provide the slides in accessible form in addition to the video (see Creating accessible PowerPoint slides ).

For screencasts in which content is written down by hand on a tablet during the video recording, an accessible document with the content developed in the video should also be made available.

These text-based media can in turn be read aloud by screen readers.

A table of contents and chapter function for the video makes it easier to find your way around the video and navigate to specific content in the video. This is helpful for anyone watching the video.

Panopto can easily add a table of contents to videos.

In addition to the table of contents, the Panopto video player also offers a search and note function, which are also helpful tools.

In addition to the aspects mentioned above, the same guidelines apply to the accessible design of videos as for other (text-based) learning materials, such as :

  • Do not use colour as the sole information carrier
  • Pay attention to font size, sans serif > good legibility
  • Understandable language
  • Sufficient contrast between objects/font and background colours

Preliminary consideration should also be given to whether space needs to be provided for subtitles, sign language interpreters, or pauses for audio description.

The criteria for determining whether a video player is accessible include, for example:

  • Keyboard control
  • Ability to show/hide subtitles
  • Ability to show/hide audio description
  • Can play at a slower speed

These criteria are met by the Panopto video player.

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