Re: Captions obscuring text content of video - SC 1.2.2 fail?

Agreed (but not a lawyer!). We’re creating college branded templates with a wider border at the bottom so there is room for captions and folks won’t be so inclined to cram their slides full of text to the bottom of the slide.

Amy Rovner, MPH RD
Director eLearning Services
Accessible IT Coordinator
Shoreline Community College
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Sent: Tuesday, September 9, 2025 5:35:42 AM
To: Mark Magennis <Mark.Magennis@skillsoft.com>
Cc: w3c-wai-ig <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Captions obscuring text content of video - SC 1.2.2 fail?

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This is an interesting scenario. If the user can pause the video and toggle captions off, then there is a mechanism to view content that might be hidden below a caption (I've done this a few times).

But if the video is being presented as a live stream (no pausing) or in a setting where they don't have individual control, that could be another issue.

My two cents

Elizabeth

On Sep 9, 2025, at 8:13 AM, Mark Magennis <Mark.Magennis@skillsoft.com> wrote:

A video includes text content that is positioned in the space used by closed captions, so the captions appear overlaid on the text. I'm wondering whether this is an SC 1.2.2 failure and it seems to rest on which part of the SC is normative.

WCAG SC 1.2.2 says "Captions<https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/captions-prerecorded.html#dfn-captions> are provided for all prerecorded audio content in synchronized media...". But in the SC text, the word "Captions" is a hyperlink to a definition of that term which includes a note "Note 4. Captions should not obscure or obstruct relevant information in the video". I assume that the definition of "Captions" is normative. But is the note within the definition also normative? Would it be true to say that if captions do obscure relevant information in the video then they don't meet the definition of captions and therefore can't be used to satisfy SC 1.2.2? And does the word "should" within the note make any difference to this interpretation?

Mark

Mark Magennis
Principal Product Manager, Accessibility

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Elizabeth J. Pyatt, Ph.D.
Accessibility IT Consultant
IT Accessibility
Penn State University
ejp10@psu.edu, (814) 865-0805 or
accessibility@psu.edu (main office)