WCAG 3.0 is an active W3C Working Draft in development by the AGWG. Requirements, assertions, the conformance model and reporting tiers are still being developed and may change. The latest published draft is the 10 September 2026 Working Draft; this site follows the editors’ draft, which also includes exploratory provisions.
exploratorySupplemental requirement
Captions Consistent
Group: images-and-media • Guideline: captions
Summary in Plain English
An exploratory requirement: captions look and behave the same way through a production and across related productions - styling, placement, and how speakers, languages and sounds are marked - unless a difference is essential.
Why It Matters
Reading captions is already a divided-attention task. Consistent conventions mean the viewer spends attention on the content rather than on decoding the captions.
Captions are presented consistently throughout the media, and across related productions, unless exceptions are essential. This includes consistent styling and placement of the captions text and consistent methods for identifying speakers, languages, and sounds.