Accessible film
Film and sound must be made available to everyone. This means that you must ensure that your film is accessible if it is published in KI:s digital channels, such as ki.se. Users who are unable to access video recordings must have the possibility to access the content with the help of an alternative representation, for example through subtitles and visual description.
The law on accessibility to digital public services aims to increase digital accessibility for all users. It must be possible for the content to be understood by people with impaired sight or hearing or who for some other reason have difficulty accessing text or sound.
On webbriktlinjer.se you will find the Agency for Digital Government’s official guidelines for how to work with audio, image and video in the public sector. The law states that alternatives should be offered if a recording consists solely of audio or video.
The film must have subtitles
People who, for various reasons, cannot clearly perceive or understand sound can in many cases comprehend the content if it is in text format. This means that you have to provide your movies with subtitles.
Tools for subtitling:
- Create subtitles for your videos with Screencast-o-Matic – Handy when your movie is a screen recording done with the same tool.
- textamig.se – Used when your film is already published, for example on Youtube, and can be provided with text afterwards. However, automatically generated text does not usually turn out perfectly, so be sure to read it through before publishing.
- Youtube automatic captions – For videos published on Youtube.
- KI:s procured suppliers for film production – When it is worth paying for help with subtitling.
Subtitles should also, in addition to the dialogue, describe other sounds of importance, such as "phone ringing", "someone coughs".
Visual description or offer alternatives
Correspondingly, people who are unable to access the visual content of a film must receive information through either visual description or through normal sound. Visual description means that a narration conveys the information that is only displayed visibly. Feel free to plan visual description or audio description in advance. If it is possible to describe important content in regular audio tracks, a separate visual-interpreted version is not always necessary. It makes it easier to plan this in advance.
Information in regular audio tracks can be included, among other things, by:
- People who speak in an interview or at a conference start by introducing themselves
- Lecturers describe important presentation slides with words, for example by saying "here I have a picture of a graph that shows that... "
- For example, films consisting only of images can be supplemented with a speaker voice. See examples on KI:s Facebook page (external link)
- The interview questions are always included in the film, either by being asked as questions or by the interviewee repeating the questions in their answer.
Live broadcasts must be subtitled and made available without delay
The law makes exceptions for live broadcasts, but if the broadcast can be accessed afterwards, it is counted as a recording and must be subtitled and supplemented with audio description or equivalent without unnecessary delay (within 14 days).
Feel free to offer a separate text version
A transcription (a document that contains all of the recording's subtitles, or equivalent) allows people using screen readers or Braille readers to access the content at their own pace.
Inform the user that there is text
Do not forget to link to the transcription (or make it otherwise accessible) in the places where the video appears, and to link to the video from the transcription if it occurs independently, so that the user can choose the version himself/herself.