[Canvas Studio] Support Audio Description Tracks
Canvas Studio users have the benefit of auto-captioning and editing captions. This allows individuals to meet WCAG 2.1 level A. To meet level AA, Canvas Studio users need to be able to provide audio descriptions when necessary (visual information occurs in the video that is not described by the audio in the video). According to the current studio documentation: "Canvas Studio does not currently provide functionality for alternate audio tracks on a single video, but additional files can be independently uploaded."
The "why" for this solution is to allow Canvas users the ability to meet the Department of Justice's rule on WCAG 2.1 AA compliance. It would be simpler to allow users to record or upload an audio track so that audio descriptions can be overlayed onto a video. This would ideally be possible with videos hosted on other platforms as well. The current annotation feature appears to be close to what could be a possible solution as well. Rather than interrupting the video with a modal that must be dismissed, if a Studio user could select moments in a video to record short audio descriptions, this would allow for the user to meet AA for 1.2.5. It might even be possible for your engineers to code the solution to allow for the video to be paused during the descriptions. This would create an extended audio description and allow users to meet 1.2.7 AAA. It might even be possible to leverage AI so that users can type in the description to appear at certain points and AI would generate the voice audio. This might eliminate the trouble of coding a solution that allows users to record audio thereby reducing background noise in audio descriptions.
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