Level A · WCAG 2.0
1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded)
Pre-recorded video with sound needs captions covering speech and the sounds that matter to understanding.
Manual only No automated check says anything useful.
How it fails in practice
A product demo on the homepage with auto-generated captions that are switched off by default — or none at all. Captions that transcribe speech but skip the alert sound the narrator refers to.
How to fix it
Ship real captions, reviewed by a person. Auto-captions are a starting draft: names, product terms and numbers are exactly what they get wrong, and those are the words that carry the meaning.
At a glance
- Level
- Level A — the minimum. Failing one of these usually makes something impossible rather than merely hard.
- Principle
- Perceivable
- Guideline
- 1.2 Time-based Media
- Added in
- WCAG 2.0
- EN 301 549
- 9.1.2.2
- Automated check
- Manual only
Manual only
How far an automated check gets
Nothing automatic decides this. A scanner that reports it as passing is reporting that it did not look. It stays untested until a person tests it and records what they did — which is exactly how we treat it: as untested, not as passed.
Related criteria
Other criteria under the same guideline.
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