November 2, 2026

Multimedia Players

Note: Last updated July 21st, 2016 to include the Web Experience Project media player and captioning legal requirements from the USA. If you have a suggested link leave a comment and I’ll add it.

Below are a few resources around media player accessibility. With so many of us embedding multimedia content in our sites and apps it’s key that we think about not just the accessibility of the player but also alternative formats, the user journey to the player and onward journeys from the player.

If you have a suggested link let me know.

Guidelines

Below are a collection of formal guidelines from W3C.

WebVTT: The Web Video Text Tracks Format – WebVTT files provide captions or subtitles for video content, and also text video descriptions [MAUR], chapters for content navigation, and more generally any form of metadata that is time-aligned with audio or video content.
Multimedia accessibility FAQ – W3C’s internal multimedia accessibility policy is in place to ensure that W3C’s work is accessible to all, including people with disabilities who cannot hear audio or see video, and to ensure that it meets W3C’s own standards
User Agent Accessibility Guidelines – UAAG 2.0 guides developers in designing user agents that make the web more accessible to people with disabilities. User agents include browsers, media players and applications that render web content. Specifically the following guidelines:

Below are a list of standards and guidelines outside of W3C that relate to multimedia accessibility.

Accessible Media players

Disclaimer: I have not tested all the players below so they are self-proclaimed accessible players.

Alternative formats

This section covers captions / subtitles, sign language and audio description.

Captioning legal requirements from the USA

Below is a list of standards and guidelines outside of WCAG that I believe relate to the legal requirement for captioning in the USA:. The following list is evolving: