Speakers Identified In Transcripts
Group: images-and-media • Guideline: transcripts
Summary in Plain English
Where there are several speakers, the transcript makes clear who is speaking - except where identity is deliberately hidden or clear from context.
Why It Matters
An unattributed transcript reads as one continuous voice, and the argument in a conversation becomes impossible to follow.
Scope: When This Applies
The draft's own conditions, quoted from guidelines/groups/images-and-media/transcripts/speakers-identified-in-transcripts.md.
Applies when
- There are multiple speakers in the video.
Except when
- The speaker has a hidden identity as part of narrative structure.
- Identity is identifiable within the context of use.
Examples from the Draft
Worked examples the W3C editors wrote into the provision itself, not examples invented here.
Initially using “Maya Angelou” within the context of a story regarding poetry and then using “Angelou”.
Test Procedure from the W3C Draft
Quoted from the provision's informative document, informative/guidelines/images-and-media/transcripts/speakers-identified-in-transcripts.md. It is the group's own procedure, not an editorial testing guide.
Consistent speaker name in transcripts
Procedure
For each transcript:
- Check that each speaker in the audio or video is consistently identified.
Expected results
- #1 is true.
W3C Working Group Status
The draft records no open editors' notes on this provision.
W3C Threads on This Provision
4 GitHub threads carrying 13 comments, fetched from w3c/wcag3 by the tracker. Titles, numbers and states are the threads' own.
What the Argument Is About
The transcript version of the provision has generated no discussion of its own — it carries the same four threads as the captions version, and nothing in them addresses transcripts as distinct from captions.
Positions taken in the thread
The case in #23 is argued mainly from captions and face-blindness, but explicitly extends to a blind person reaching the material as a transcript or captions through braille. Without speaker identification, reading it is like reading a playscript with no characters identified. This is the only point in the record that speaks to transcripts specifically, and nobody contested it; the fuller argument is under Speakers identified in captions.
u9000-Nine's repeated proposal in #23 is that open-captioned video should be required in WCAG 3 to carry a text transcript as well, because "captions are explicitly an alternative for audio". The points that closed captions may be customisable and routable to a braille display come from WilcoFiers's opening questions in #23, not from u9000-Nine. This is about whether a transcript exists at all rather than about identifying speakers inside one. awkawk acknowledged it as a clear proposal without endorsing it, having pushed back on the 1.1.1 and 1.4.5 reasoning behind it; that exchange is written up under Captions adjustable.
MakotoUeki (#472) wants a concrete example for each of the three notes — full name then part of name, hidden identity as narrative structure, recognisable position within the context of use. sydneycolemanfromgoogle (#512) wants the provision limited to systematically identifiable speakers, citing shared-room meeting recordings and a lone self-introducing speaker, and suggests it stay supplemental. ashleemboyer (#748) wants "video" generalised to "media", which lands hardest here, since an audio-only recording's transcript is frequently its only alternative. None of the three has had a reply, and none distinguishes transcripts from captions.
Argues the discussion is North-America-centric in treating text as the identifier, pointing to the BBC's recommendation of colours to distinguish speakers and its common use in continental Europe, while noting colour identification might itself fail Use of Color. He raised this against the captions discussion; nobody has addressed what it means for a provision written once to cover both captions and plain-text transcripts.
Agreed
- Speaker identification serves braille readers of transcripts as well as caption users — Finnberrys's point, unrebutted.
- Generalising the applies-when clause from video to media has drawn no objection, only silence.
Still open
- Whether the provision should apply beyond video at all — ashleemboyer, #748.
- Whether it should be limited to systematically identifiable speakers, and how to avoid repeating a single speaker's name throughout — sydneycolemanfromgoogle, #512.
- What a concrete example of each note looks like — MakotoUeki, #472.
- Whether the transcript, caption and audio-description versions of this provision should differ from one another at all. Nobody in these threads has taken that up, even though all four are labelled across all three provisions.
Note
This provision shares all four of its threads with Speakers identified in captions, and #23 with Captions adjustable. All 13 recorded comments sit in #23; the other three issues are bodies with no replies. Because none of that discussion is transcript-specific, the substance is written up under the captions entries and only summarised here.
- #23 Create Audio and video alternatives guideline open 13 comments · updated 2026-09-11
- #472 Need concrete examples - Speakers identified (Core) open 0 comments · updated 2026-09-10
- #512 [Speakers identified] lack of clarity for user who can’t or choose not to be identified open 0 comments · updated 2026-09-10
- #748 "Speakers identified" should apply beyond video content open 0 comments · updated 2026-09-11
WCAG 2.2 Criteria That Map Here
From this site's reviewed WCAG 2.2 → WCAG 3 map. The map is an interpretation, not a W3C mapping: W3C has not published one yet.
No mapping recorded. No WCAG 2.2 criterion in this site's map is recorded as a predecessor of this provision.
W3C Raw Source Text
Verbatim from guidelines/groups/images-and-media/transcripts/speakers-identified-in-transcripts.md · informative document: informative/guidelines/images-and-media/transcripts/speakers-identified-in-transcripts.md
Speakers are identified understandably within all transcripts. :::applies-when - There are multiple speakers in the video. ::: :::except-when - The speaker has a hidden identity as part of narrative structure. - Identity is identifiable within the context of use. ::: :::example Initially using "Maya Angelou" within the context of a story regarding poetry and then using "Angelou". :::