Skip to content

Proposed Test Rule: audio element content has transcript

Applicability

This rule applies to every non-streaming audio element that is:

Note: A play button is an interactive element that when activated, plays the audio.

Expectation

The auditory information of each test target is available through a text transcript. That text transcript is visible and included in the accessibility tree, either on the page or through a link.

Note: A “text transcript” in the context of this rule is defined in WCAG 2 as an alternative for time based media.

Assumptions

This rule assumes that the language of each test target can be correctly determined (either programmatically or by analyzing the content), and sufficiently understood.

Accessibility Support

There are no major accessibility support issues known for this rule.

Background

Bibliography

Accessibility Requirements Mapping

This rule is not required for conformance.

Input Aspects

The following aspects are required in using this rule.

Test Cases

Passed

Passed Example 1

Open in a new tab

Audio with controls and internal transcript

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" controls></audio>
	<p>
		The above audio contains the following speech: We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things,
		not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best
		of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to
		postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
	</p>
</html>

Passed Example 2

Open in a new tab

Audio with controls and external transcript

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" controls></audio>
	<a href="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech-transcript.txt">Transcript</a>
</html>

Passed Example 3

Open in a new tab

Audio with autoplay and external transcript

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" autoplay></audio>
	<a href="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech-transcript.txt">Transcript</a>
</html>

Failed

Failed Example 1

Open in a new tab

Audio with controls and no transcript

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" controls></audio>
</html>

Failed Example 2

Open in a new tab

Audio with controls and incorrect internal transcript

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" controls></audio>
	<p>
		The above audio contains the following speech: We choose to go to the cheese in this decade and do the other things,
		not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best
		of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to
		postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
	</p>
</html>

Failed Example 3

Open in a new tab

Audio with controls and incorrect external transcript

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" controls></audio>
	<a href="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech-incorrect-transcript.txt">Transcript</a>
</html>

Failed Example 4

Open in a new tab

Audio with autoplay and incorrect external transcript

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" autoplay></audio>
	<a href="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech-incorrect-transcript.txt">Transcript</a>
</html>

Failed Example 5

Open in a new tab

Audio with controls and non-visible internal transcript

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" controls></audio>
	<p style="text-indent: -9999px;">
		The above audio contains the following speech: We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things,
		not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best
		of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to
		postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
	</p>
</html>

Failed Example 6

Open in a new tab

Audio with controls and internal transcript that is not exposed to the accessibility tree

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" controls></audio>
	<p aria-hidden="true">
		The above audio contains the following speech: We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things,
		not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best
		of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to
		postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
	</p>
</html>

Inapplicable

Inapplicable Example 1

Open in a new tab

Audio without controls.

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3"></audio>
</html>

Inapplicable Example 2

Open in a new tab

Audio with hidden controls.

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" controls style="display: none;"></audio>
</html>

Glossary

Focusable

An element is focusable if one or both of the following are true:

Exception: Elements that lose focus during a period of up to 1 second after gaining focus, without the user interacting with the page the element is on, are not considered focusable.

Notes:

Included in the accessibility tree

Elements included in the accessibility tree of platform specific accessibility APIs are exposed to assistive technologies. This allows users of assistive technology to access the elements in a way that meets the requirements of the individual user.

The general rules for when elements are included in the accessibility tree are defined in the core accessibility API mappings. For native markup languages, such as HTML and SVG, additional rules for when elements are included in the accessibility tree can be found in the HTML accessibility API mappings (working draft) and the SVG accessibility API mappings (working draft).

For more details, see examples of included in the accessibility tree.

Programmatically hidden elements are removed from the accessibility tree. However, some browsers will leave focusable elements with an aria-hidden attribute set to true in the accessibility tree. Because they are hidden, these elements are considered not included in the accessibility tree. This may cause confusion for users of assistive technologies because they may still be able to interact with these focusable elements using sequential keyboard navigation, even though the element should not be included in the accessibility tree.

Non-streaming media element

A non-streaming media element is an HTML Media Element for which the duration property is not 0.

Outcome

An outcome is a conclusion that comes from evaluating an ACT Rule on a test subject or one of its constituent test target. An outcome can be one of the three following types:

Note: A rule has one passed or failed outcome for every test target. When there are no test targets the rule has one inapplicable outcome. This means that each test subject will have one or more outcomes.

Note: Implementations using the EARL10-Schema can express the outcome with the outcome property. In addition to passed, failed and inapplicable, EARL 1.0 also defined an incomplete outcome. While this cannot be the outcome of an ACT Rule when applied in its entirety, it often happens that rules are only partially evaluated. For example, when applicability was automated, but the expectations have to be evaluated manually. Such “interim” results can be expressed with the incomplete outcome.

Programmatically Hidden

An HTML element is programmatically hidden if either it has a computed CSS property visibility whose value is not visible; or at least one of the following is true for any of its inclusive ancestors in the flat tree:

Note: Contrarily to the other conditions, the visibility CSS property may be reverted by descendants.

Note: The HTML standard suggests rendering elements with the hidden attribute with a CSS rule that applies the value none to the CSS property display of the element. Although the suggestion is not normative, known user agents render it according to the suggestion (unless the content specifies another CSS rule that sets the value of the display property). If a user agent does not follow the suggestion, this definition may produce incorrect results for this user agent.

Visible

Content perceivable through sight.

Content is considered visible if making it fully transparent would result in a difference in the pixels rendered for any part of the document that is currently within the viewport or can be brought into the viewport via scrolling.

Content is defined in WCAG.

For more details, see examples of visible.

Implementations

There are currently no known implementations for this rule. If you would like to contribute an implementation, please read the ACT Implementations page for details.

Changelog

This is the first version of this ACT rule.

Back to Top

This is an unpublished draft preview that might include content that is not yet approved. The published website is at w3.org/WAI/.