Success Criteria

WCAG 1.2.5 Audio Description (Prerecorded)

Success Criterion 1.2.5 requires audio description for all prerecorded video content in synchronized media. It's a Level AA criterion under Guideline 1.2 (Time-based Media) — a stricter version of 1.2.3, which allowed a full text alternative as an easier substitute at Level A.

The AA difference

At Level A (1.2.3), a video could satisfy the requirement with either an audio-description track or a complete text document describing the video. At Level AA, that alternative narrows: a genuine audio-description track is expected for any video where visual information isn't already conveyed by the existing audio. This reflects that a text document, while acceptable as a baseline accommodation, is a meaningfully worse experience than integrated audio description — a viewer has to stop watching and switch to reading, rather than experiencing the video the way it was meant to be consumed.

What good audio description sounds like in practice

Audio description is inserted into natural pauses in dialogue — describing a character's action, an on-screen graphic, a scene change — timed so it doesn't talk over existing dialogue. For content with few natural pauses (dense dialogue throughout), an "extended" audio description approach may pause the video itself to fit the description in, though WCAG 2.2 doesn't require extended description at the AA level (that's covered by a separate AAA-level criterion).

Production planning implications

Because audio description requires scripting and recording a new narration track, it's most efficiently planned as part of a video's original production rather than retrofitted afterward — similar to live captioning's planning requirement, this is a criterion best addressed proactively in a content pipeline rather than as a post-launch remediation task.

Common questions

What is WCAG 1.2.5?

A Level AA criterion requiring an audio description track for prerecorded video, describing key visual content (actions, characters, on-screen text) during natural pauses in dialogue.

How is 1.2.5 different from 1.2.3?

1.2.5 (AA) requires audio description specifically; the Level A 1.2.3 lets you satisfy it with either audio description or a full text alternative.

When is audio description not needed?

When all important visual information is already conveyed in the main audio track, no separate description track is required.