Proposed Test Rule: audio element content has transcript

Description

Non-streaming audio elements must have a text alternative for all included auditory information.

Applicability

This rule applies to every non-streaming audio element that is:

Note: A play button is an interactive element that when activated, plays the audio.

Expectation

The auditory information of each test target is available through a text transcript. That text transcript is visible and included in the accessibility tree, either on the page or through a link.

Note: A “text transcript” in the context of this rule is defined in WCAG 2 as an alternative for time based media.

Assumptions

This rule assumes that the language of each test target can be correctly determined (either programmatically or by analyzing the content), and sufficiently understood.

Accessibility Support

There are no major accessibility support issues known for this rule.

Background

Test Cases

Passed

Passed Example 1

Audio with controls and internal transcript

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" controls></audio>
	<p>
		The above audio contains the following speech: We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things,
		not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best
		of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to
		postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
	</p>
</html>

Passed Example 2

Audio with controls and external transcript

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" controls></audio>
	<a href="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech-transcript.txt">Transcript</a>
</html>

Passed Example 3

Audio with autoplay and external transcript

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" autoplay></audio>
	<a href="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech-transcript.txt">Transcript</a>
</html>

Failed

Failed Example 1

Audio with controls and no transcript

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" controls></audio>
</html>

Failed Example 2

Audio with controls and incorrect internal transcript

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" controls></audio>
	<p>
		The above audio contains the following speech: We choose to go to the cheese in this decade and do the other things,
		not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best
		of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to
		postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
	</p>
</html>

Failed Example 3

Audio with controls and incorrect external transcript

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" controls></audio>
	<a href="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech-incorrect-transcript.txt">Transcript</a>
</html>

Failed Example 4

Audio with autoplay and incorrect external transcript

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" autoplay></audio>
	<a href="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech-incorrect-transcript.txt">Transcript</a>
</html>

Failed Example 5

Audio with controls and non-visible internal transcript

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" controls></audio>
	<p style="text-indent: -9999px;">
		The above audio contains the following speech: We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things,
		not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best
		of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to
		postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
	</p>
</html>

Failed Example 6

Audio with controls and internal transcript that is not exposed to the accessibility tree

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" controls></audio>
	<p aria-hidden="true">
		The above audio contains the following speech: We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things,
		not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best
		of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to
		postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
	</p>
</html>

Inapplicable

Inapplicable Example 1

Audio without controls.

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3"></audio>
</html>

Inapplicable Example 2

Audio with hidden controls.

<html lang="en">
	<audio src="/test-assets/moon-audio/moon-speech.mp3" controls style="display: none;"></audio>
</html>

Glossary

Focusable

Elements that can become the target of keyboard input as described in the HTML specification of focusable and can be focused.

Included in the accessibility tree

Elements included in the accessibility tree of platform specific accessibility APIs. Elements in the accessibility tree are exposed to assistive technologies, allowing users to interact with the elements in a way that meet the requirements of the individual user.

The general rules for when elements are included in the accessibility tree are defined in the core accessibility API mappings. For native markup languages, such as HTML and SVG, additional rules for when elements are included in the accessibility tree can be found in the HTML accessibility API mappings (working draft) and the SVG accessibility API mappings (working draft).

For more details, see [examples of included in the accessibility tree][].

Note: Users of assistive technologies might still be able to interact with elements that are not included in the accessibility tree. An example of this is a focusable element with an aria-hidden attribute with a value of true. Such an element could still be interacted using sequential keyboard navigation regardless of the assistive technologies used, even though the element would not be included in the accessibility tree. [examples of included in the accessibility tree]: https://act-rules.github.io/pages/examples/included-in-the-accessibility-tree/

Non-streaming media element

A non-streaming media element is an HTML Media Element for which the duration property is not 0.

Outcome

An outcome is a conclusion that comes from evaluating an ACT Rule on a test subject or one of its constituent test target. An outcome can be one of the three following types:

Note: A rule has one passed or failed outcome for every test target. When there are no test targets the rule has one inapplicable outcome. This means that each test subject will have one or more outcomes.

Note: Implementations using the EARL10-Schema can express the outcome with the outcome property. In addition to passed, failed and inapplicable, EARL 1.0 also defined an incomplete outcome. While this cannot be the outcome of an ACT Rule when applied in its entirety, it often happens that rules are only partially evaluated. For example, when applicability was automated, but the expectations have to be evaluated manually. Such “interim” results can be expressed with the incomplete outcome.

Visible

Content perceivable through sight.

Content is considered visible if making it fully transparent would result in a difference in the pixels rendered for any part of the document that is currently within the viewport or can be brought into the viewport via scrolling.

Content is defined in WCAG.

For more details, see examples of visible.

Implementations

There are currently no known implementations for this rule. If you would like to contribute an implementation, please read the ACT Implementations page for details.

Changelog

This is the first version of this ACT rule.

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This is an unpublished draft preview that might include content that is not yet approved. The published website is at w3.org/WAI/.