WCAG 1.2.2 — Captions (Prerecorded), explained with examples

Why this criterion exists

Deaf and hard-of-hearing users (1 in 6) cannot access audio content without captions; auto-translated captions also benefit non-native speakers.

If you only remember one thing: captions must be provided for all prerecorded audio in synchronized media. Everything else on this page is detail.

Who feels it when this fails

Accessibility criteria sometimes feel abstract until you see who pays the cost when a site ignores them. Captions (Prerecorded) affects:

• Deaf and hard-of-hearing users

• Non-native speakers

• Users in sound-off environments

How sites typically fail it

These are the patterns we see week after week. None are intentional — they are accidents of how teams build interfaces under deadline. Knowing the failure modes is the fastest path to writing them out of your component library.

• Marketing videos without captions

• YouTube auto-captions left as the only option

How to test for it

• Watch every video with sound off; meaning must be preserved.

A code fix you can copy

Author and ship a real WebVTT caption file. Auto-captions are not WCAG-compliant.

<video src="/promo.mp4" controls></video>

<video src="/promo.mp4" controls>
  <track kind="captions" src="/promo.en.vtt" srclang="en" label="English" default>
</video>

Other Perceivable criteria