Captions available (prerecorded)

Argued in #23 that open captions are literally pixels of text burned into video frames, so they would fail 1.4.5 Images of Text at AA if they had alt text, and otherwise fail 1.1.1 Non-text Content at A, since no video frame carries alt text. Conceded awkawk's rebuttal on the alt-text point but held the substantive request: open-captioned video should be required to carry a textual transcript in WCAG 3, not only from 1.2.8 upward. Raised the edge case of instructional video with music-only audio, where the captions are effectively carrying video-only time-based media.

Open captions are part of the time-based media, not separate non-text content, so the alternative required at Level A is the alternative for the video as a whole. Captions of either kind are equivalents for audio information, so the Prerecorded Video-Only provision u9000-Nine cited does not apply — video-only content has no audio and therefore no captions. Stated flatly that open captions pass Level A, full stop, and that a transcript for audio information is not required until 1.2.8.

Argues in #23 that without knowing who said what, a story or issue becomes hard to follow, and that this is critical for people with face-blindness — Finnberrys identifies people by voice, so muted or inaccessible audio removes the only cue. Compares captions without speaker identification to reading a playscript with no character names, and cites Teams meetings, where visible names do the work that in-person recognition cannot. Makes the same case for blind users reading captions or a transcript on a braille display.

u9000-Nine notes that identifying speakers by caption position on screen does nothing for someone with face-blindness, since the cue still depends on matching a location to a face. mitchellevan calls the discussion North-America-centric for assuming the identifier is text, pointing to the BBC's subtitle guidance recommending colour to distinguish speakers, a practice also common in continental Europe — while acknowledging colour identification may itself fail Use of Color. Neither rejects the need; both points bear on which mechanism would satisfy it, and mitchellevan asks for more international context.

On whether advertising and promotional video should carry less weight than primary content, mraccess77 points out that inaccessible video causes clear discrimination in areas such as fair housing and healthcare, and draws the parallel to audio description, once dismissed as unnecessary for entertainment until entertainment was recognised as a right too. mitchellevan agrees on equal weight: user needs and technical feasibility are the same, "promotional" resists definition, and regulations such as the US Air Carrier Access Act already carve out advertising where a jurisdiction wants that. Prioritisation should sit in regulation, not be baked into a technical standard.

InfoGapBuster, writing as a Deaf person in #325, argues auto-generated subtitles may be inaccurate or fail to convey tone and nuance, and that WCAG 2.0 putting sign language at AAA led to limited implementation. Cites 250,000 to 500,000 primary ASL users in the US per Gallaudet, roughly 70 million Deaf people globally per the World Federation of the Deaf, about 60,000 JSL users in Japan, and 90 to 97 percent of Deaf children born to hearing parents with the resulting risk of language deprivation. Wants sign language translation — prepared in advance, distinct from live interpretation — named as a distinct outcome, arguing that requiring it would generate demand, grow the interpreter pool and accumulate training data. md84419 goes further, calling for a sign language alternative to website text and citing the BSL Act 2022, the Equality Act 2010, the Irish Sign Language Act 2017, the Korean Sign Language Act 2016 and the New Zealand Sign Language Act 2006 as evidence that language-based discrimination is already legally constrained.