How to make video and audio accessible
Visual information in videos
Make sure videos use accessible colour and avoid flashing images.
On this page
Using colour
Tiredness, screen displays, light levels, age and visual impairments can all affect how easily some colours in your video stand out.
Make sure colours used for any important text or images in your video have accessible colour contrast.
For example, important text could be caption text (open captions) that appear on screen or text on a slide.
An informative image could be a line chart that must have good contrast between the:
- text labels and background colours
- lines and background colours
- lines next to each other
Important text and images must have a minimum colour contrast ratio of 3:1.
The most inclusive and easiest to read colours for non-text content have a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1.
Colour contrast ratio is the difference in brightness between two colours.
Decorative images or text in brand logos do not need accessible colour contrast.
Do not use colour alone to show meaning. For example, you may need to add text labels or different patterns to bars in a chart, even if it has an accessible contrast ratio.
Checking colour contrast
There are many free tools you can use to check colour combinations in your content.
WebAIM's Contrast Checker is web-based tool you can use that works with most types of content. Use the Colour Picker's dropper tool or add different colours using a hex colour code or red, green and blue (RGB) values.
Gp tp WebAIM's Contrast Checker
Finding accessible colours to use
You can use the hex values for different colours, like #FFFFFF to:
- find colour pallets that are WCAG compliant using the Venngage Accessible Color Palette Generator.
- better understand how different colours combinations affect different people on the WhoCanUse website.
Flashing images
Avoid flashing images, like footage of a strobe light or lightening.
Flashing images can cause people to have seizures or feel dizzy, nauseous or disorientated.
If you include flashes in your video, reduce risk to viewers by:
- not having more than three flashes a second
- keeping flashes small with low colour contrast to other content
For example, a scene involving very bright lightning flashes is edited so that the lightning only flashes three times in any one second period.
Related resources
Colour contrast
- Colour contrast accessibility (Scope for business)
- Colour contrast – why does it matter? (Accessibility in government)
- Contrast and Color Accessibility (WebAIM)
