Problems with audio/movies

The a11y problems with audio and movies are quite obvious - the content is not available there for everyone. We have to provide captions or/and transcripts to make them accessible.

The captions are subtitles synchronized with the visual part. They should be accurate and contain not only the words but also other meaningful sounds like a laugh, cry, etc.

The transcript is just plain text with full audio and movie descriptionS. It has no time information inside and is mostly useful for people who are both deaf and blind

What is worth remembering for many deaf people English (or any other language used in their country) is the second language - after sign language. It's why communicating via pen and paper is very often difficult for them. And it's why we have sign interpreters - people who can translate between sign and spoken languages. It's why you can see sometimes on the webpages both options - subtitles/transcript and movie with a sign interpreter. In many countries (e.g. Poland) the provision of sign interpreter support in official cases (like visits to a town hall) is required by law.

Some of the modern tools (e.g. Twitter, Zoom) provide support for live captioning - it's not perfect and is insufficient for recordings (as they very often contain a lot of mistakes) but can be a very useful option during live events.

Note: Providing captions/transcripts is also one of the examples of how improving accessibility can help everyone. They can be super useful not only for deaf people but also audience listening to the audio in their non-native language, staying in a loud area or when a speaker has a strong accent.

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