1.2.3 / 1.2.5 Audio description - right language required?

[detlevhfischer]

As far as I can see, neither the normative text of 1.2.3 and 1.2.5 nor the definition of "audio description" has anything on the 'right' language for such description (maybe due to an english-centric bias where AD in different languages rarely surfaces). In a current audit of a German site, there are videos with a voice-over comment in English describing what happens.

Looking strictly at the normative text we'd have to pass this provided the AD covers the visuals sufficiently - even if the AD language were Chinese (and we'd be able to tell whether it covers the visuals, which we aren't) - right?

Since there is no markup for spoken language, 3.1.2 Language of parts would not really help here.

Or am I missing something?

[mbgower]

Proposed draft response 1

As far as I can see, neither the normative text of 1.2.3 and 1.2.5 nor the definition of "audio description" has anything on the 'right' language for such description

You are correct. There is no wording in any of the 1.2 Time-based Media which makes an explicit statement that the alternative provided is in the same language as the original (with the possible exception of the language in 1.2.1 which uses the phrase "presents equivalent information").

This shortcoming is most apparent in situations where translation of time-based media content exists, in the form of subtitles. If a video has English dialog and has Spanish subtitles, the subtitles would seem to qualify as captions, which are defined as:

synchronized visual and/or text alternative for both speech and non-speech audio information needed to understand the media content

However, anyone who speaks English but not Spanish, who is in need of captions, will not consider Spanish 'captions' to meet their need, in the above situation. Likewise, in the situation where the video was dubbed in Spanish but the captions were presented in English, a deaf Spanish-only speaker would similarly feel the captions were not meeting their need.

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[JUNE 2nd UPDATED, AFTER DISCUSSION IN TASK FORCE MEETING, WE BELIEVE THE FOLLOWING SHOULD BE CHANGE. See details in later comment.]

Looking strictly at the normative text we'd have to pass this provided the AD covers the visuals sufficiently

Given this limitation has existed in WCAG language for 15 years, it may be unnecessary to make a normative change to the 2.x wording; there is a clear expectation of matching the language of text alternatives of any kind with the existing language on the page. In your situation, if the language of the page is German, but the audio descriptions of a video on the page are in English, this expectation of consistent language seems reasonable grounds for challenging the use of English in a German-language video. There is also the question of whether Language of Parts has been done properly.

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The problem with the existing lack of clarify around text alternatives matching the language of the original content has been added to the WCAG 3 parking lot under the section Assumption of matching language/dialect is not explicit

[detlevhfischer]

Thanks, @mbgower. I think the gap is clear and the need for the right language of AD evident. I was just trying to frame it in terms of the practical problem of how to deal with it in a PASS/FAIL audit.

I was saying that "we'd have to pass this provided the AD covers the visuals sufficiently".

When you replied, "You are correct", are you saying we must pass this since there is no normative language to FAIL it? Or do you say, "everyone knows that right language is implied, so we should FAIL this even in the absence of normative text supporting that?" Which of the two is it?

Whichever way this goes, I'd really like to get a WG consensus on this since this situation is not infrequent. For cases of alt in the wrong language, we can at least resort to 2.4.4 (links) or 2.4.6 (button labels) and say "this is not descriptive" (for the intended audience). But bringing AD under 2.4.6 would surely be a stretch.

[patrickhlauke]

Agree that there is an unspoken assumption in the SCs (and even in 1.1.1 when it comes to text alternatives) that of course nobody would be so silly as to provide the alternatives/descriptions/etc in a completely different language from the surrounding content (not necessarily the page as a whole, but at least its immediate vicinity/context). While adding a requirement along those lines can't be done in non-normative documents (otherwise it would, quite rightly, be called out as adding new normative requirements by the backdoor), it would be good to at least strongly suggest that this should be done, but that it technically passes the tightly defined wording of the SC

[melaniephilipp]

Does the requirement that a conforming alternate version "provides all of the same information and functionality in the same human language..." give you the normative cover you are looking for?

[patrickhlauke]

The thing with the conforming alternate version is that, on its face, that term is used when talking about content that does not satisfy an SC on its face per https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/#cc1 (i.e. the content itself wouldn't pass an SC, but there is an alternate version of the content/page that provides the content in a conformant way), whereas here the alternatives are part of the SC's requirement itself (and they don't link to that definition of conforming alternate version). So again, while the idea seems to implicitly be there, it wasn't made explicit in the way the normative stuff was put together?

[dabrams888]

of course nobody would be so silly as to provide the alternatives/descriptions/etc in a completely different language

I ran into this silly scenario the other day, though it wasn't as straight-forward as you may think. In testing a video that had both English and Spanish dialog in the audio track, I wasn't sure what the best recommendation would be for the language of captions and transcripts.

Option 1

The captions/transcripts keep a consistent language throughout and provide a separate version for each language (including indications when the spoken language changes).

This seems more like a "subtitle" than a "caption".

Option 2

The captions/transcripts match the exact text that was spoken regardless of language since that's more "equivalent" to the audio.

Practically speaking, option 1 sounds better. But option 2 seems like the more "conformant" option since it's an exact alternative to the spoken audio.

I know this thread is focused more on AD, but it seems like this topic extends pretty well to captions and transcripts too.

[mbgower]

I think @melaniephilipp's point about conforming alternate version is worth exploring, particularly note 3:

If multiple language versions are available, then conforming alternate versions are required for each language offered.

That seems to potentially give us some scope to address the existing normative language of all the different use cases cited on this page.

It does not resolve exactly what would pass and fail -- at least I don't think we'd arrive at consensus. However, it would seem to offer an auditor sufficient technical wording to question the use of a different language in an 'equivalent' or 'alternative' version than the language of the originating page/parts.

[detlevhfischer]

As it stands, the proposed WG answer does not clarify my question, which was focused on whether the use of the wrong language in AD is a normative fail. So I think either the WG answer should clarify that technically speaking, it is not (as @patrickhlauke seems to suggest above) or this needs more time to develop an argument that finds normative backing for a FAIL elsewhere. I am fine with it either way, but what to get out of the grey zone.

[guyhickling]

Language mismatches don’t just happen in video captions and (as Patrick points out above) SC1.1.1 alternative texts). It also occurs in a variety of other kinds of content mark-up where two or more languages are involved, on bi-lingual websites.

The problem concerns everything in these foreign language translations, including aria-label attributes, alt texts, texts hidden by CSS for screen readers, aria-roledescription attributes, the