Video accessibility on the most accessed websites - a case study regarding visual disabilities

Abstract

The availability of video content has increased along with the popularity of the Web due to the large amount of interactive systems and video sharing. This scenario should be carefully considered by video authors since the content needs to be accessible to a variety of final users (including people with disabilities). Although efforts have been made to improve accessibility for embedded videos on webpages, there still the need to develop accessibility solutions for video content. In this study we aim to analyze the video accessibility on the most accessed websites, identify the accessibility controls they had or not and which navigation mode they used to help people with visual disabilities. We analyze each video player of the top 50 websites to identify which controls they use. Also, we made a case study with a blind user, who was interviewed too. As results we realize that the most accessed websites are not accessible. Additionally, the blind user reported the problems he has to understand video content, to navigate through webpages and to use video players. The most accessed websites did not have accessible controls, only two sites allow to watch videos with captions. The blind user has reported main issues and barriers that he usually faced while trying to access video contents in the websites, and these comments are specially lessons that all video developers should have in mind.