`<video>` elements do not contain a `<track>` element with `[kind="captions"]`

May 2, 2019 • Updated Sep 19, 2019

Captions make video elements usable for deaf or hearing-impaired users, providing critical information such as who is talking, what they're saying, and other non-speech information.

How the Lighthouse video caption audit fails #

Lighthouse flags <video> elements that are missing a <track> element with the attribute kind="captions".

The Lighthouse Accessibility score is a weighted average of all the accessibility audits. See the Lighthouse accessibility scoring post for more information.

How to add captions to a video #

Add at least one track element to the video element with the kind="captions" attribute:

<video width="300" height="200">
    <source src="marathonFinishLine.mp4" type="video/mp4">
    <track src="captions_en.vtt" kind="captions" srclang="en" label="english_captions">
    <track src="audio_desc_en.vtt" kind="descriptions" srclang="en" label="english_description">
    <track src="captions_es.vtt" kind="captions" srclang="es" label="spanish_captions">
    <track src="audio_desc_es.vtt" kind="descriptions" srclang="es" label="spanish_description">
</video>

The example above includes both captions for deaf users, and audio descriptions for visually impaired users. Audio descriptions provide context beyond dialog, such as scenery, facial expressions. See also <video> elements do not contain a <track> element with [kind="description"].

Resources #

Last updated: Sep 19, 2019 Improve article