Video accessibility

How ScanGov checks videos on your site for captions and descriptive titles.

ScanGov checks the video on every page it scans and flags the issues that keep people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or using a screen reader from getting the same information as everyone else. Failing pages add tasks to your tasklist.

What ScanGov checks

Captions on video — each <video> element has a <track> element with kind="captions".
Titles on frames — each <iframe>, including embedded video players, has a title that describes it.

These checks are part of the Accessibility indicator.

Limits

ScanGov checks the page's own markup. It cannot see inside an embedded player, so it does not verify that a YouTube or Vimeo video has captions turned on.
ScanGov does not check the quality of captions, or whether you offer a transcript or audio description.

How to fix

Add a captions track to every self-hosted video.
Give every embedded video player a short title that says what the video is about.
For embedded videos, confirm the video has captions in your video host.

Examples

Video without captions (fails):

<video src="presentation.mp4" controls></video>

Video with a captions track (passes):

<video controls>
  <source src="presentation.mp4" type="video/mp4">
  <track kind="captions" src="captions-en.vtt" srclang="en" label="English" default>
</video>

Embedded player without a title (fails):

<iframe src="https://example.gov/map"></iframe>

Embedded player with a title (passes):

<iframe src="https://example.gov/map" title="Office locations map"></iframe>