How to make video and audio accessible

Audio-only content includes podcasts and recordings of poetry, speeches and interviews. Unlike video, it does not have any visual content.

Audio-only content must have a basic transcript. This is a text version of the speech and non-speech audio information that people need to understand the content.

Providing a basic transcript helps people who can't or find it difficult to hear audio. It also helps people who find it difficult to process audio information and prefer to read it.

How to add a basic transcript

To create your basic transcript, you need to transcribe your audio. This means putting the informative audio into text. Follow the W3C guide on transcribing audio to text.

Once you have created your basic transcript, you should make it easy for people to find.

If you're embedding your audio-only content on a web page, we recommend publishing the descriptive transcript directly underneath the video. Or you can link to it instead.

For example, there is a transcript link on each episode page on the This American Life podcast website. This link takes the user to a page where the basic transcript text is published as web page text.