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

May 2, 2019 • Updated Sep 19, 2019

Audio descriptions provide relevant information for videos that dialogue cannot, such as facial expressions and scenes.

How the Lighthouse video description audit fails

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

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 audio descriptions to video elements

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

<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 audio descriptions for visually impaired users and captions for hearing impaired users. Captions make video elements usable for deaf or hearing-impaired users. See also <video> elements do not contain a <track> element with [kind="captions"].

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Last updated: Sep 19, 2019 Improve article