Make audio and video evidence accessible

Which recording deserves a text version?

Choose material that answers a real audience question: a technical demonstration, an interview with original evidence or a reported explanation. Record the original publication date, speakers, publisher and rights to reproduce the recording, transcript and images. Permission to link to a broadcast is different from permission to republish the entire segment.

Define the useful output before transcribing. A verbatim transcript preserves the spoken record; a summary selects and explains the key points. A descriptive transcript can also include meaningful visual information. The W3C transcript guidance is a practical reference for making the content accessible to people who cannot use the recording in its original form.

How should you review the text?

Use automatic transcription as a draft when appropriate, then check names, numbers, dates, negations and specialist terms against the recording. Mark unclear passages for review and retain their unresolved status. Preserve who said what, especially when speakers disagree or a question contains an allegation that the speaker rejects.

For an illustrative product demonstration, the sentence “offline export is not available” must not become “offline export is available.” That small transcription error would reverse the feature claim. Check important claims against current product evidence before adding them to a summary, and distinguish what was true at recording time from what is true now.

Add timestamps where they help readers find the supporting passage. For a visual demonstration, explain relevant on-screen actions or results that the audio alone does not convey. Avoid inventing visual details from an audio-only source.

What should the public page contain?

Create a clear title, a concise description of the recording, its date, speaker identification and the reviewed text. Embed or link the original media where you are authorized to do so. Identify whether the text is a transcript, edited transcript or summary, and provide a correction route for material errors.

Use an organized package:

A useful summary adds context that helps its intended reader. Consolidate near-identical versions. Google’s video documentation provides discovery and metadata guidance; it does not establish that every AI service reads only subtitles. Google’s broader AI search guide also recognizes images and video alongside text.

How do you check whether the package helps?

Test the page as a reader on mobile and desktop. Confirm the media loads, captions are usable, the transcript is available and source links resolve. Ask someone unfamiliar with the recording to locate the evidence for one important claim.

Then collect relevant answer observations with the model, question, date and visible citations preserved. A cited video URL, a cited transcript page and a quoted statement are distinct findings. If the material is absent, inspect topic relevance and access without assuming that transcription guarantees a citation. Choose follow-up work based on the reader’s remaining need, not a promised six-week discovery window.