Component Best Practices How to Make it Accessible

Media Player -

The buttons need to be properly labeled so a screen reader user can operate the player.

Keyboard Navigation

- It is important to accesssibility that students can access and operate a media player with the keyboard alone (not using a mouse).

To test for keyboard accessibility, press the Tab key to naviate to the player, and use the Tab, Arrow keys, Enter, and Spacebar to interact with the media player buttons. Depending on the control, the player should operate using the Enter key, space bar and arrow keys. Check the following to determine keyboard accessibility:

  • The Enter key or space bar activates the Play/Pause control.
  • The arrow keys, usually up and down arrow keys, manipulate the Volume control.
  • The arrow keys, usually left and right keys, manipulate the Forward and Rewind controls.
  • Depending on their design, other controls like Captions and Full Screen are activated by the keyboard.
Media Player

Screen Reader Accessibility

For screen reader accessibility, the characteristics of each media player control must be stated by the screen reader. These characteristics are:

  • Name ("Play", "Fast Forward").
  • State ("selected", "expanded").
  • Role ("button", "list").
  • Value ("75%" for volume).

Captioned Media -

We recommend you first search for captioned media, but you are not required to use only captioned media. Use the best media for your lesson. Uncaptioned media will be accommodated at the time of need.

Search for captioned media

- The NOVA Library has a wide selection of captioned media. Check with your campus or ELI librarian.

Avoid auto-generated media

Avoid any YouTube video with captioning that was auto-generated.

How do I find human transcribed captioned videos on YouTube? (Search from YouTube site):

  1. Type your search keyword(s) in the YouTube Search field.
  2. Before you press Enter or select the magnifying glass icon, add , CC at the end of your search.

YouTube Search field showing How to make cheesecake, CC

How do I know what type of captioning is available for a YouTube video?

  1. Select the Settings button and check the Subtitles field.
  2. Avoid auto-generated subtitles and the Translate feature which are not usually accurate.

YouTube settings button and check subtitles and avoide auto-generated

How do I find captioned videos from Google?

  1. Fill out the Google Advanced Video Search fields that you need.
  2. Choose the "Subtitles: Closed captioned only" option.
  3. Press Enter or select the Advanced Search button. The results may or may not be human transcribed. Results will be listed from all across the internet, not just YouTube.