Audio and video: disproportionate burden assessment

Published 13/03/2024.  Last updated 29/05/2024

Under The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No.2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (“The Regulations”), organisations are required to undertake an assessment for disproportionate burden where compliance with the regulations may not be feasible to achieve. 

Scope 

This report outlines our disproportionate assessment process in relation to meeting Web Content Accessibility Guidance (WCAG) 2.2 level AA. Specifically, Success Criterion: 

This is because our YouTube channel and website contain many videos that do not provide: 

  • accurate captions for pre-recorded video 
  • an audio description for non-verbal information in videos 
  • a descriptive transcript for pre-recorded audio and video content 

Benefits 

The benefits of updating our audio and video content to include transcripts, accurate captions and audio descriptions would be that all content would be fully accessible to all users. 

Burden 

We know that some of our videos are not accessible for users with additional access needs or users of assistive technology. We have approximately 3700 videos on our YouTube channel. Around 90% of them embedded onto the Education Scotland website. 

Each recording would require several hours of work to update. All revisions would then need to be signed off by the content owners, which would place strain on teams across the organisation. 

Assessment  

There is a prohibitive cost in terms of staff time to update captions, provide transcripts and audio descriptions for all existing audio and video content.  

These recordings are part of the public record but may no longer represent the current position and are of limited interest.  

We intend to review our video assets as part of our ongoing content review. We will ensure that any new audio and video resources have captions and audio description or a descriptive text alternative. We will also ensure that older, obsolete audio and video resources are removed. 

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Audio and video: disproportionate burden assessment

Published 13/03/2024.  Last updated 29/05/2024

Under The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No.2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (“The Regulations”), organisations are required to undertake an assessment for disproportionate burden where compliance with the regulations may not be feasible to achieve. 

Scope 

This report outlines our disproportionate assessment process in relation to meeting Web Content Accessibility Guidance (WCAG) 2.2 level AA. Specifically, Success Criterion: 

This is because our YouTube channel and website contain many videos that do not provide: 

  • accurate captions for pre-recorded video 
  • an audio description for non-verbal information in videos 
  • a descriptive transcript for pre-recorded audio and video content 

Benefits 

The benefits of updating our audio and video content to include transcripts, accurate captions and audio descriptions would be that all content would be fully accessible to all users. 

Burden 

We know that some of our videos are not accessible for users with additional access needs or users of assistive technology. We have approximately 3700 videos on our YouTube channel. Around 90% of them embedded onto the Education Scotland website. 

Each recording would require several hours of work to update. All revisions would then need to be signed off by the content owners, which would place strain on teams across the organisation. 

Assessment  

There is a prohibitive cost in terms of staff time to update captions, provide transcripts and audio descriptions for all existing audio and video content.  

These recordings are part of the public record but may no longer represent the current position and are of limited interest.  

We intend to review our video assets as part of our ongoing content review. We will ensure that any new audio and video resources have captions and audio description or a descriptive text alternative. We will also ensure that older, obsolete audio and video resources are removed. 

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