Finally, yet another way of providing a textual description is to include it in the page in the
surrounding context:
Below is a picture of me during my great vacation!
(b) Equivalent alternatives for any multimedia presentation shall be synchronized with
the presentation.
What are considered equivalent alternatives?
Captioning for the audio portion and audio description of visual information of multimedia
presentations are considered equivalent alternatives. This provision requires that when an audio
portion of a multimedia production is captioned, as required in provision (a), the captioning must
be synchronized with the audio. Synchronized captioning would be required so someone
reading the captions could also watch the speaker and associate relevant body language with
the speech.
If a website offers audio files with no video, do they have to be captioned?
No, because it is not multimedia. However, since audio is a non text element, a text equivalent,
such as a transcript, must be available. Similarly, a (silent) web slide show presentation does
not need to have an audio description accompanying it, but does require text alternatives to be
associated with the graphics.
If a Federal agency official delivers a live audio and video webcast speech, does it need
to be captioned?
Yes, this would qualify as a multimedia presentation and would require the speech to be
captioned.
Example:
National Endowment for the Humanities
www.neh.gov/media/scottcaptions.ram
National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM)
http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/access/dvs/lion.ram
(c) Web pages shall be designed so that all information conveyed with color is also
available without color, for example from context or markup.
Why is this provision necessary?
When colors are used as the sole method for identifying screen elements or controls, persons
who are color blind as well as those people who are blind or have low vision may find the web
page unusable.
National GACC Website and GACC Website Template
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Implementation Guidelines
