a11y teacher edition W3C WCAG 2.2 & WCAG 3.0 draft reference
Plain English Accessibility Hub

Translating W3C Standards for Designers, Developers, QA & Product teams

โš ๏ธ W3C Working Draft Notice

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 editorsโ€™ draft, which also includes exploratory provisions.

developing Core requirement

Captions equivalent (prerecorded)

Group: images-and-media • Guideline: captions

Summary in Plain English

Captions have to be equivalent to the audio, not an approximation of it. Audio or video with no spoken content that serves only as background is exempt.

Why It Matters

Auto-generated captions routinely drop names, technical terms and negations. An approximate caption can change the meaning of what was said.

Scope: When This Applies

The draft's own conditions, quoted from guidelines/groups/images-and-media/captions/captions-equivalent-prerecorded.md.

Except when

  • The audio or video has no spoken content and serves only as background.