25 posts tagged with "WCAG"

The European Accessibility Act (EAA) requires companies selling products and services in the EU market to make digital content, including video, accessible to people with disabilities. Enforcement began in June 2025 for most covered sectors. Video accessibility under the EAA aligns with EN 301 549 and WCAG 2.1 Level AA, which means prerecorded video needs captions, meaningful visual content needs audio description, and live services need real-time text alternatives where applicable.

State government video must meet Section 508 accessibility standards when the agency is a federal agency, a state agency subject to state-level Section 508 adoption, or any entity developing ICT with federal funding. In practice, that means prerecorded video needs synchronized captions, live events need real-time captions where feasible, and meaningful visual content needs audio description, all aligned with WCAG 2.1 Level AA. These obligations apply on their own timeline and are not replaced by ADA Title II deadline extensions.

Recap Innovations is pleased to announce our new Wistia integration, bringing AI-powered captioning and audio description workflows and automated caption audits directly to the video platform marketing teams, training organizations, and institutions already rely on. Connect your Wistia account once, browse your media library inside Recap, generate audio descriptions in standard and extended modes, publish professional captions with AI, and run compliance audits across a single video, an entire folder, or your full account.

Update: HHS extended the compliance dates (May 2026)​

On May 7, 2026, HHS announced that the Office for Civil Rights issued an interim final rule extending Section 504 web, mobile app, and kiosk accessibility compliance dates by one year. Recipients with 15 or more employees must now conform by May 11, 2027 (previously May 11, 2026). Smaller recipients have until May 10, 2028 (previously May 10, 2027). See the official HHS announcement.

The sections below explain what the underlying 2024 rule requires for video and kiosks; deadline references in this article reflect the revised 2027 and 2028 dates above unless clearly marked as historical.

On May 9, 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published a final rule updating Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. The rule requires recipients of HHS federal funding to make their web content, mobile applications, and kiosks accessible to people with disabilities by conforming to WCAG 2.1 Level AA. After the May 2026 extension, larger recipients (15 or more employees) must comply by May 11, 2027, and smaller recipients by May 10, 2028.

The DOJ also extended ADA Title II web accessibility compliance dates by a year. Many organizations must plan for both schedules: a public entity may get extra time under Title II for some digital properties while HHS-funded programs still follow the Section 504 dates in the Update section above.

On April 20, 2026, the Department of Justice published an interim final rule extending the compliance dates for web content and mobile application accessibility under ADA Title II. The WCAG 2.1 Level AA requirements adopted in April 2024 are unchanged; only the enforcement calendar has moved.

Government entities are responsible for making their social media videos accessible under ADA Title II, even when the platform itself does not offer built-in caption support. We have added a new export option to Recap that lets you burn captions directly into the video frames, producing a file with permanently visible (open) captions that works on any platform.

The DOJ's ADA Title II final rule requires state and local government web content, including video, to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. But not every video a government entity has ever published must be made accessible by the compliance deadline. The rule defines five specific exceptions, plus additional provisions for fundamental alteration, undue burden, and minimal-impact noncompliance.

This article explains each exception, how it applies to video content, and what obligations remain even when an exception applies.

When a city posts a video to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or X, that video is government web content. Under the DOJ's ADA Title II final rule, it must meet the same WCAG 2.1 Level AA accessibility standards as content on the city's own website. The rule does not distinguish between a formal council meeting recording embedded on a .gov site and a 30-second community event clip posted to Instagram Reels.

This article covers what the rule requires for social media video, which posts are exempt and which are not, what accessible social media video looks like in practice, and how the platform-versus-content distinction works.

Your city posts a 90-second video to Facebook announcing a new recycling program. It shows an infographic with collection schedules, a map of service zones, and text overlays with phone numbers and dates. It gets shared 400 times. It has no captions, no transcript, and no audio description. Under the DOJ's ADA Title II rule, that video is a compliance gap, and it is one that cities create dozens of times per month across Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, X, and their own websites.

This article is for the city clerk, communications director, or media team member who already knows their city needs to make social media video accessible, but needs a practical solution they can present to a supervisor or budget director for final approval.

If you are a city clerk, city manager, or IT director at a local government with 50,000 or more residents, the ADA Title II compliance deadline for your web content is April 24, 2026. That includes every council meeting video, commission meeting recording, public hearing, and informational video on your city website or social media channels.

Many cities are discovering that their current streaming or website vendor has been slow to offer accessibility solutions, or that the quoted costs are far higher than expected. This guide is for the local government staff member who needs to get compliant quickly, practically, and affordably.

Not all educational videos are the same, and the way you audio describe them should not be the same either. A screencast with code scrolling across the screen presents completely different challenges than a chemistry lab demonstration or a talking head over a slide deck. For example, typical reccomendations of describing all on-screen text don't work well when the entire screen is covered in code and rapidly shifts between opened files in an IDE. The visual information that matters, the pacing, and the level of detail required all change depending on the format.

This guide breaks down the most common educational video formats and explains what to prioritize, what you can safely omit, and whether standard or extended audio descriptions are the better fit. Whether you are producing descriptions manually or reviewing AI-generated output, these format-specific techniques from Recap Innovations will help you create descriptions that are accurate, useful, and well-timed.

360-degree videos are becoming more common across education, tourism, training, and entertainment. They let viewers pan, tilt, and rotate their perspective to explore an entire scene rather than watching from a fixed camera angle. But this new level of viewer control creates a unique accessibility challenge: how do you write audio descriptions for video content where every viewer may be looking at something different?

This question is coming up more frequently in accessibility communities, and for good reason. The traditional model of audio description, where a describer narrates the visual content the viewer sees, does not map neatly onto a format where there is no single "correct" view. In this guide, we break down what 360-degree video is, why it complicates audio description, and how to create descriptions that give blind and low-vision viewers equivalent access to immersive content.

Not every live event has the same captioning needs. An informal departmental meeting and a graduation commencement require very different levels of accuracy. That is why Recap Innovations now offers three distinct live captioning service tiers, including a new professional CART option with human captioners delivering 99%+ accuracy in real time.

Audio descriptions are required for pre-recorded video content under WCAG 2.1 AA and ADA Title II. They make visual information accessible to blind and low-vision viewers by narrating actions, settings, on-screen text, and other elements that are not conveyed through dialogue or sound effects. With the ADA Title II compliance deadline in April 2026, institutions managing large video libraries need to decide how to produce descriptions at scale.

There are two primary approaches: fully automated AI generation and human-authored descriptions. Each has distinct strengths, and many teams benefit from combining both. This article breaks down the trade-offs and helps you choose the right workflow for your content.

Recap Innovations already offers fully automated AI audio descriptions that can process thousands of videos with same-day turnaround. For many institutions, that is the right solution. But not every team can use AI-generated content. Some operate under data governance policies that prohibit sending video to third-party AI models. Others require human-authored descriptions for quality assurance, subject-matter accuracy, or institutional policy reasons. And some simply want a faster way to review and refine AI output before publishing.

Today we are introducing voice mode: a new way to create audio descriptions and edit transcripts by speaking instead of typing. It gives human describers the productivity benefits of automation without requiring any AI processing of video content.

Recap Innovations is pleased to announce our new Google Meet integration, bringing automated transcription, AI-powered audio descriptions, and intelligent meeting summaries to every Google Workspace, regardless of plan tier. Teams can now connect their Google Meet account to Recap and have recordings processed automatically the moment they become available, with no manual steps required.

Recap Innovations now supports live captioning for YouTube live streams, enabling content creators, educational institutions, and enterprises to deliver accessible broadcasts that meet WCAG 2.1 AA compliance standards.

State and local governments, including city councils, county boards, and public agencies, face an approaching ADA Title II compliance deadline requiring all web and mobile content, including videos, to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA accessibility standards. Communities with populations over 50,000 must comply by April 24, 2026, while those under 50,000 have until April 24, 2027. This requirement fundamentally changes how government entities publish meeting videos, public announcements, educational content, and other multimedia materials.

This comprehensive guide explains the video accessibility requirements for state and local governments, the compliance deadlines based on population size, and practical solutions for meeting these mandates through transcription, closed captioning, live captioning, and audio description services.

AI audio description is transforming how educational institutions make video content accessible to students with visual disabilities. As the April 2026 ADA Title II compliance deadline approaches, understanding what AI audio description is, how it works, and when to use it has become essential for every college and university.

This comprehensive guide explains everything you need to know about AI audio description technology, from the basics to advanced implementation strategies.

Live captions—also known as real-time captions or Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART)—are becoming essential for colleges and universities. With the April 2026 ADA Title II compliance deadline requiring institutions to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards, live captioning for all live audio content is now mandatory, not optional. This comprehensive guide explains what live captions are, when they're required, how they work, and how to implement them effectively at your institution.