Captions and the law: video accessibility rules in the EU and US

The short version

No single law says every video must have captions. Instead, several rules require certain organizations to make their websites, apps, services or programming accessible, and those rules rely on standards — WCAG above all — that do require captions. Whether a video needs them depends on who publishes it and where.

WCAG: the technical baseline

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, published by the W3C, underpin every rule in this guide, directly or through EN 301 549. WCAG 2.1 was published on June 5, 2018 and WCAG 2.2 on October 5, 2023. Content that conforms to 2.2 also conforms to 2.1, and WCAG 2.2 is also an international standard, ISO/IEC 40500:2025.

Two details matter. Level AA — the level these rules reference — includes every Level A criterion, so it means captions for prerecorded and live video plus audio description. And WCAG’s definition of captions covers non-speech audio such as sound effects and speaker identification, not just dialogue. Audio description can be simpler than it sounds: WCAG notes that if the audio already conveys all the important visual information, no additional description is needed.

EU: the European Accessibility Act

The European Accessibility Act — Directive (EU) 2019/882, adopted April 17, 2019 — sets accessibility requirements for certain products and services. Member states had to adopt national laws by June 28, 2022 and apply them from June 28, 2025. Each sets its own penalties, which the Act says must be effective, proportionate and dissuasive.

What it covers

Products placed on the market after June 28, 2025: consumer computers and operating systems; payment and self-service terminals such as ATMs and ticket machines; consumer devices used for electronic communications or for accessing audiovisual media services; and e-readers.

Services provided to consumers after June 28, 2025: electronic communications; services providing access to audiovisual media; parts of air, bus, rail and waterborne passenger transport, such as websites, apps, e-tickets and travel information; consumer banking; e-books; and e-commerce. It also covers answering emergency calls to 112.

Where video comes in

• Websites and apps of in-scope services must be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust — WCAG’s four principles — with EN 301 549 as the practical measure. The Act exempts only older prerecorded video (below), so newer video there is in scope.
• Services giving access to audiovisual media, including electronic programme guides, must pass through access services such as subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, audio description, spoken subtitles and sign language interpretation in full, synchronized, with adequate quality and with user control over their display.
• Exempt on websites and apps: prerecorded time-based media published before June 28, 2025, archives not updated or edited since then, and third-party content the business doesn’t fund, develop or control.

Broadcasters and on-demand services have further obligations under the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (2010/13/EU), which the Act refers to.

Exemptions and transition periods

• Microenterprises providing services — fewer than 10 employees and no more than €2 million in annual turnover or balance sheet total — are exempt from the service requirements.
• Until June 28, 2030, service providers may keep using products they were already lawfully using, and service contracts agreed before June 28, 2025 may run until they expire, for no more than five years from that date.
• Self-service terminals already in use may, if a member state allows it, stay in service for their economically useful life, up to 20 years.

EU: EN 301 549

EN 301 549 is the harmonised European standard for ICT accessibility, published by ETSI, CEN and CENELEC. Conforming to a harmonised standard cited in the Official Journal of the EU gives a presumption of conformity with the Act for the requirements that standard covers.

• Version 3.2.1 (2021) is based on WCAG 2.1 Level AA and, according to the European Commission’s AccessibleEU centre, remains the reference until a new version is cited.
• Version 4.1.1, published in September 2026, moves to WCAG 2.2 and maps its requirements to the Act. Once cited, it will give a presumption of conformity with both the Act and the Web Accessibility Directive. It hadn’t been cited when AccessibleEU reported its publication on September 7, 2026.

The standard’s clause 7 covers video players and apps rather than caption files. Version 3.2.1 requires a way to display captions; synchronization within 100 milliseconds of each caption’s time stamp in recorded material; user control over caption appearance, except for unmodifiable text such as bitmap subtitles; and, in products that mainly play video, caption and audio description controls at the same level as the main playback controls.

EU: the Web Accessibility Directive

Directive (EU) 2016/2102, adopted October 26, 2016, covers public sector websites and mobile apps. It has applied since September 23, 2019 to websites not published before September 23, 2018, since September 23, 2020 to all other websites, and since June 23, 2021 to apps.

• Video: prerecorded media published before September 23, 2020 and live media are exempt, so prerecorded video published since then is in scope.
• Excluded: public service broadcasters; NGOs that don’t provide services essential to the public or aimed at people with disabilities; and, at each member state’s option, schools, kindergartens and nurseries, except for essential administrative functions.
• Statements: public sector bodies must publish and regularly update an accessibility statement. Member states may also set stricter national rules.

US: ADA Title II (state and local government)

A 2024 Justice Department rule under Title II of the ADA makes WCAG 2.1 Level AA the standard for the web content and mobile apps that state and local governments provide or make available, from city websites to public school districts. An interim final rule published April 20, 2026 extended the compliance dates. Current dates, per ADA.gov:

That means captions for prerecorded and live video and audio description for prerecorded video, with exceptions for qualifying archived content, preexisting documents and social media posts, third-party content, and individualized password-protected documents. Exceptions don’t end the duty to communicate effectively: the DOJ’s example is a city captioning an archived video when a person with a hearing disability asks for access.

US: ADA Title III (businesses open to the public)

Title III covers businesses open to the public, from stores and banks to hotels and medical offices. No DOJ regulation sets detailed web standards for them, but the DOJ’s guidance of March 18, 2022 says the ADA applies to what they offer online, leaves them flexibility in how to comply, and points to WCAG. It names videos without captions as a barrier and recommends accurate, synchronized captions that identify speakers. The guidance notes that it doesn’t have the force of law.

In Robles v. Domino’s Pizza (2019), the Ninth Circuit held that the ADA applied to Domino’s website and app because they connect customers to its physical restaurants, that the lack of DOJ web regulations didn’t remove that duty, and that an order to comply with WCAG was a possible remedy. Domino’s argued that federal appeals courts disagreed about how Title III applies online, but the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in October 2019. Both the DOJ guidance and that decision point to WCAG as the benchmark.

US: Section 508

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires federal agencies to make the technology they develop, procure, maintain or use accessible. The Access Board’s Revised 508 Standards, issued January 18, 2017 and in effect since January 18, 2018, require electronic content to meet WCAG 2.0 Level A and AA, captions included.

US: the CVAA and FCC rules for online video

The Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) became law on October 8, 2010. The FCC’s rules under it, at 47 CFR 79.4, say programming shown on US television with captions must keep them when it’s delivered over the internet.

• Scope: TV-style programming. The definition excludes consumer-generated media.
• Full-length programs: phased in from September 30, 2012 (prerecorded, not edited for the internet), March 30, 2013 (live and near-live) and September 30, 2013 (prerecorded and edited for the internet).
• Clips: single excerpts from January 1, 2016, files combining several clips from January 1, 2017, and clips of live and near-live programming from July 1, 2017 — within 12 and 8 hours, respectively, after the program airs.
• Quality and display: captions at least as good as the TV captions, passed through by distributors, with covered devices and apps letting viewers resize caption text from 50% to 200%.

A creator whose videos have never aired on US television with captions isn’t covered; a broadcaster posting clips of its shows is.

A practical checklist

1. Identify the rules that apply — public body, federal agency, business open to the public, EU in-scope service or broadcaster — and their dates.
2. Inventory your video across sites, apps and platforms, marking what’s prerecorded, live, archived or third-party.
3. Caption prerecorded video, including speaker changes and meaningful sounds (WCAG 1.2.2).
4. Plan live captions for streams and webinars (1.2.4).
5. Handle audio description (1.2.5), ideally by narrating key visual information in the script.
6. Review automatic captions for names, numbers and terminology before publishing.
7. Offer closed captions viewers can resize and switch off, even if the video also has captions burned in.
8. Test your player against EN 301 549 clause 7: controls easy to find, captions in sync.
9. Keep SRT or VTT files with your video masters so you can republish, translate and respond to requests.
10. Publish an accessibility statement — required for EU public sector bodies, good practice for everyone else.
11. Get legal advice on the hard cases: archives, third-party content, contracts and cross-border services.

Software can handle the captioning itself. AutoCap generates captions timed to every word, lets you correct them, and exports burned-in video or, on paid plans, SRT and VTT files — see the closed caption generator. No tool makes an organization compliant on its own, though: the player, the website and the process around them matter too. For how caption type affects accessibility, see open vs closed captions.