Captions, transcripts, and audio descriptions

Alexander Street wants the video content on its platform to be accessible to all users. That’s why captions are available for all videos with transcripts, which is approximately 95% of all videos on the platform. Captions are generated from the transcript files. 

Alexander Street aims to provide transcriptions for as many videos as possible. Time-synchronized transcripts and are fully searchable. Exceptions include non-English films (non-English languages are not currently transcribed), silent films, and videos containing no dialogue, such as musical performances (transcripts are limited to speech within the video and do not include an alternative textual presentation of the music).

Audio descriptions are not widely available for videos found on the Alexander Street Video Platform but are available for a select number of titles. 

Where users may have problem accessing video content, contact us to discuss the most appropriate solution using the contact information in the Support and Feedback section of this document.

Navigation for assistive technologies

Since the website is coded with accessibility in mind, there are a number of features that will help you navigate and control video content. First, you should be able to quickly skip to main content areas on the page using skip links. These skip links are visible only when tabbing through the page with the tab key on your keyboard.

On the results page, you can narrow down your video results using our filters. Select the “funnel” icon, which has the accessible label of “Filter.” This appears before the results themselves. Each filter category (like subject, publisher, etc.) can be searched by typing in the search field for each filter list. Results are updated immediately, though these updates are not read with a screen reader. Currently, you will need to use the arrow keys and navigate the list to discover the results.

Before watching a video, we recommend tabbing into (or mousing over) the video thumbnail. Once you do, you will find a “See details” option. When selected, this option will give you the ability to read more about the video before watching it. There are some cases where video thumbnail images contain inaccessible text. That said, we have tried to include all important information (such as the producer, video title, abstract, etc.) in this “See details” section.

When available, captions are displayed by default, though the captions control and all other video controls can be accessed by the keyboard. You can use the spacebar to start and stop the video.  Please note that there are some keyboard shortcuts that are trigger by a single letter.  These shortcuts may interfere with voice commands.  The letter “k” starts and stops the video, the letter “f” allows you to transition in and out of full screen, and the letter “m” mutes and unmutes the video. 

To access the video’s transcript, navigate to the Transcript section of the video page. You can search using the search transcript feature. If you are using the site with a keyboard or screen reader, you will notice an informational box that appears with various skip links. Here, you can skip the transcript all together or skip to the current time in the video.  After searching within the transcript, you’ll see another keyboard shortcut appear that allows you to skip to the selected search result.  You can press the left and right arrow keys to navigate between the search results and press the escape key to return to the beginning of the transcript section.