Video has no captions track

Why it matters

Deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors — and anyone watching with the sound off — rely on captions to follow speech in a video.

Who it affects: Deaf and hard-of-hearing people, screen reader users whose speech is drowned out by audio, and people with vestibular or attention disorders affected by motion.

What Lumtera flags

Self-hosted videos with no captions track. Silent background videos are skipped; captions burned into the picture cannot be detected, so this is a review item.

Check ID video-no-captions — use it to filter the content report or with wp lumtera issues --rule.

How to fix it in WordPress

In the Video block settings, use "Text tracks" to upload a captions file (.vtt) and set its kind to Captions. If the captions are already part of the picture, or the video has no speech, dismiss this item.

Example

<video src="webinar.mp4" controls></video>

<video src="webinar.mp4" controls>
  <track kind="captions" src="webinar.en.vtt" srclang="en" label="English">
</video>

How to check your fix

1. Update the post. The issue disappears from the Accessibility sidebar on the next check, and from the site report on the next scan.
2. Play the page with the sound off, then with a screen reader on. Speech should be captioned, nothing should play sound by itself, and anything that moves should be stoppable.