This is a DRAFT resource that supports Working Drafts of WCAG 3. Content in this resource is not mature and should not be considered authoritative. It may be changed, replaced or removed at any time.
🔙 WCAG 3.0 (Silver) Guidelines (Captions)
Method: Caption reflow
Platform
- Media players
- Immersive technology engines
Technology
- Media
- XR
Summary
Users with vision impairments may need to resize or reflow captions, subtitling or other text. It is important that caption, subtitling or text can reflow (in context) within an XR environment without loss of information, context or functionality.
How it solves user need
People can choose a font format or size of their choice or use a mechanism with accessible affordances. This will allow them to resize and reflow text without either hiding or obscuring the content or substantial loss of context. The means of choice can be via (choose at least one):
- user preference
- personalization
- other customisation setting
Outcome and Functional Categories
This method supports the outcome Conveys information about the sound.
Applies to immersive environments that support text equivalents (such as captions or transcripts) of audio track.
Detailed description
Maintaining reflow context in XR for Captions
Content should not lose its context. This means that when captioning is related to speech they maintain their relationship with the source. If captioned text within the environment needs to be moved there is a persistent parent / child relationship between the related source and the related caption that enables either to be moved or other transformations to take place.
See https://github.com/w3c/silver/issues/139 for example of traditional content in XR environment
Anti-Aliasing or use of vector graphics of Captions
Depending on the environment - Captions should be resized without loss of quality. This may mean anti-aliasing options need to be available in XR or requiring the use of vector style graphics for captions and other text, which means they will resize more easily without loss of quality.
Dependencies
None
None.
Example 1
A conversation is taking place between a group of people at a virtual meeting and a deaf user is tracking this discussion - there may be colour coding to distinguish the speakers and the caption colours may be related.
The deaf user may later wish to explore the environment or look at some thing - and therefore move focus from the speakers but dock the captions, or keep them in some bespoke view. Therefore the speaker source and ‘their’ captions relationship can be maintained.
This relationship maybe as simple as a text saying ‘Speaker name: Lorraine’, ‘Speaker name: Ruairi’ or similar. Or could be provided in markup. Providing the association of ‘source/caption’ in markup would allow greater movement, and further potential transformations.
Atomic Tests
- Check that there is support for captioning and subtitling of multimedia content.
- Check that there is support for reflow of captions and other text.
- Check that a mechanism exists to reveal further text within the XR environment without the need to scroll.
- Check that there are semantics present that define context and relationships between related captions, subtitles and their source.
- Check that where captions and other text may be placed on a second screen, context and source information is maintained.
Holistic Tests
- Still to be developed. We will include this in a future working draft.
W3C Resources
Non-W3C Resources
Status
Draft
Change Log
- 2020-09-10: Draft