Videos, Charts, Tables, Forms

Videos, Charts, Tables, Forms

If you have videos, charts and/or complex images like maps, tables or forms on your site, there is more to know.

Videos

Multimedia presentations can be inaccessible to people who are unable to hear their audio content and to people who are unable to see critical information that is presented visually. 

  • For those with hearing impairment, the alternative you provide is a transcript.
  • For those who are unable to see all information the alternative you provide is an audio description.
  • Additionally, for an audiovisual presentation, a transcript or an audiovisual description does not provide an equivalent experience, because the presentation's message is dependent on the simultaneous interaction between its audio and video portions. For this reason, a text alternative and audio description should be synchronized with the multimedia presentation.

Read CIT's excellent article: Accessibility and Embedded Videos to learn more.  Also, take a look at WebAIM's article: Captions, Transcripts and Audio Descriptions.

Cornell's Video on Demand service uses Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) to add machine generated captions to your video. You can then edit the captions.

Charts & Maps

Informative & Complex Images

  • Informative images replace text based content. The information conveyed through these images are important to understanding the message of the site. Alternative text should succinctly describe the concept/information the image is conveying.
  • Complex images include: graphs, charts (flowcharts/org charts); diagrams and illustrations where the user needs to understand the image to understand the page; maps.
    • All complex images require either a text alternative or an accessible alternate method of understanding the content.
    • Alternate methods:
      • Maps: Provide a method of receiving text based instructions, so users to do have to rely on a graphic alone. Review CIT's suggestions for maps.
      • Flowcharts: Create an outline. An example might be an organizational chart. It is recommended that an org chart be turned into an outline (here’s a sample) for an alternate and accessible version. 

Tables

Tables can present significant challenges to people using a screen reader to consume web content. If tables are your only option, read WebAIM's article on Creating Accessible Tables.

Forms

Any forms on our sites or in our applications must be accessible. Read the WebAIM article on Creating Accessible Forms.