WCAG 1.2.3 — Audio Description or Media Alternative (Prerecorded)
Prerecorded video with an audio track must give blind users a way to follow what's on screen. Either an audio description narrating the visuals, or a full text transcript that covers everything dialogue alone misses.
What this requires
For prerecorded synchronised media at Level A, the author has a choice: provide an audio description that narrates the on-screen visuals during the natural pauses in dialogue, or provide a full text alternative that covers everything happening on screen — visual actions, on-screen text, scene changes, gestures, anything a blind user would otherwise miss. The text alternative is a complete equivalent, not a summary.
How AI coding tools fail this
When asked to embed a video tutorial or product demo, AI tools generate the player markup and never raise the question of an audio-described version. Even when the visuals carry most of the information (a screen recording of a UI walkthrough), the assistant ships a single audio track and considers the work done.
The second pattern: a <video> with captions but no description track.
Captions cover 1.2.2 and the assistant treats accessibility as a single
box that has been ticked. Blind users get the dialogue and lose
everything happening on screen.
The third: text alternatives that are marketing summaries ("Watch our launch story") presented as if they were equivalents. The criterion requires the same information, not the same intent.
Edge cases
- Talking-head videos where the speaker is centre-frame and nothing else is happening on screen often satisfy this criterion via the captions alone — but only if there's genuinely no visual information being conveyed.
- Screen recordings and tutorials almost always need either audio description or a transcript. The information is in the screen.
- 1.2.3 is Level A; 1.2.5 is Level AA. 1.2.3 accepts a text alternative or audio description. 1.2.5 requires audio description (no text-alternative fallback).
- Extended audio description (pausing the video to fit longer narration) is a Level AAA criterion (1.2.7).
- Embedded YouTube/Vimeo videos inherit the player's accessibility, but the responsibility for the description track or transcript stays with the publisher.
How Jeikin handles this
This is a manual review. The scanner lists every <video> element on
the site and asks the reviewer to record which alternative is in place
— described version, transcript, or "visuals carry no information".
The dashboard keeps the answer as evidence, not as an automated claim.