Video and audio accessibility

Creating accessible video and audio

An accessible video includes title, captions and a transcript. These elements are mandatory. An audio file includes a title and a transcript and both are delivered in our accessible media player.

There are multiple ways to create a transcript and captions. If you are using an external agency for production or for generation of the transcript and captions, you should ask them to provide a .vtt file for a video or audio file being used on UBS.com. We use the .vtt file to generate both the transcript and the captions.

If you are producing the transcript and captions internally, we have provided a workflow that allows you to deliver them in an efficient way. Once a completed video or audio file is uploaded to Brightcove (our video hosting solution) you will be sent an email directing you to a service called UBS Transcribe. This will provide you with an editable transcript produced using Artificial Intelligence. This transcript will vary in quality, depending on the length of the video, the quality of the recording and the clarity of the speaker. You will need to correct the words, and the punctuation. You can also assign other people to edit and/or approve the transcript. Once you complete the job by publishing the transcript, the finished .vtt file is automatically sent to the production team and then they will add it to the video, and that will generate the transcript and captions.

User guide for using UBS Transcribe

Questions & Answers

Expand all

What are captions?

Captions are essentially the spoken word synchronized with the video and must cover all of the dialogue (either verbatim or in essence) as well as all important sounds.
Captions are important when people need to see what's happening in the video and get the audio information in text at the same time.
Captions are also helpful for everybody when the sound must be turned off due to some reason.

Note

Use closed caption

At UBS closed captions are the preferred solution, they can be turned on and off. The closed captions are turned on by default.
- Best practice
  - Make sure that captions are one or two lines.
  - Generally, it is best to keep them under 32 characters per line.
  - Put a new sentence on a new line.
  - Add in audio descriptions when people are not speaking in square brackets – e.g. [Music playing], [Alarm rings] or [No sound].
Open captions are always displayed and cannot be turned off. Due to the mandatory use of transcripts, the caption text would be displayed twice when using "open captions". Therefore, please do not use the open captions.

What is a transcript?

What is the difference between open and closed captioning?

How do I describe visuals?

How you provide audio description depends on the situation. For things like a title slide with text, you should cover it with the title and description of the video. In a presentation where the speaker shows a chart, instead of pointing to a slide and saying, "as you can see on this slide, the GDP peaked here", she/he can say "this chart of GDP in years 1990 to 2020 shows that it peaked in August 2019 with $2.828 trillion". This would be the best and simplest solution.
When a speaker shows line graphs or tables with lots of information, you should add a hint into the transcript, where these can be read in accessible format or you add the summarized information directly into the transcript. Captions should not be used for covering long additional information.
A summary of the shown data in the transcript is sufficient - just think what's important from a user perspective for understanding the context.

What is the right format for a transcript file?

Are captions and transcript the same?

Captions and transcript can in some cases have the same content. When you upload the captions file, a transcript gets generated automatically as an exact copy.
They can as well be different. When you upload the files with the video, you can choose which file will be the captions-file and which one the transcript-file.
You can edit the captions and transcript file before upload and check spelling and add short supplements at the right position in time.

Examples to show when a transcript needs additional editing:

In this video the spoken word of the presenter makes up the entire content and is fully covered in the captions. Therefore, the transcript will be the same text.

The charts in this video contain too much information for the captions. This can be addressed in the transcript. A descriptive text is required, pointing out the essence or containing a hint where the accessible content can be read on the page.

What is audio description and how do we handle it?

Audio description provides content to people who are blind and others who cannot see the video adequately. It describes visual information needed to understand the content.
For example, “Pat opens a jewelry box, looks at a diamond engagement ring, and cries”. Audio Description is usually narration added to the soundtrack of a movie.
For UBS videos we recommend to include audio description into the transcript. This practice is in conformance to WCAG AA.

Here's a short example of an audio description that you might recognize

We have a video with open captions, do we still need a transcript?

Elements

Video player with activated captions and transcript.

Closed captions
Hide/unhide captions
Hide/unhide transcript
Transcript

Live example

Settings

Video is playing

After starting the video, captions button (3) gets displayed, allowing to show / hide the captions.
The transcript button (4) is displayed for showing / hiding the transcript.
With the settings button (5) you can change language for caption and transcript, quality and speed.

Change settings

Created example

What to check for

Every video has a title, captions and a transcript.
Even videos that do not contain conversations/speeches need a written descriptive transcript, which is a text description of the video.
Every audio has a title and transcript.
Captions are synchronized and names are spelled correctly.

Tip

Videos with title, captions and transcript are much better recognized and indexed by search engines. The optimization has a big impact on page ranking and accuracy of hits in search engine results – internally and externally.

Editor has full control

This label indicates that the editor has full control and a thorough editing is necessary.

Skip Links

New checklists

Search Title