Do I need to add subtitles to videos on my webshop?

Captions are usually required for product videos with audio

For pre-recorded video with spoken content, captions are the standard way to meet the accessibility requirement. If a product video includes, for example, a seller explaining how a product works, or background music with a voice-over conveying important information, that video falls under the requirement that content must be followable without sound. This applies to videos on product pages, but equally to videos on instruction pages or the homepage.

Video that is purely decorative and contains no spoken content or relevant audio information is typically excluded — there is nothing to caption. For live streams, such as a live shopping session, the practice differs from pre-recorded material; what exactly is expected in terms of captioning varies from the requirement for a video already available on the site. How this is assessed exactly also depends on what else appears on the page: if the information from the video is already presented as text alongside it, that changes the situation. This requirement does not stand alone; it is part of the broader level that applies to a webshop, as explained in what WCAG 2.1 level AA means in plain language.

Where this follows from: EN 301 549 and WCAG 2.1

This requirement comes from WCAG 2.1, the assessment framework on which EN 301 549 is based in practice and which is the standard for the European Accessibility Act. For pre-recorded multimedia with audio, WCAG 2.1 sets out success criteria for captions and alternatives, increasing in stringency as level AA is applied — the level to which EN 301 549 refers. An automated scan can usually identify that a video appears on a page, but cannot assess whether the captions are substantively correct or complete; that is one of the things that cannot be tested with an automated scan. Whether this type of requirement applies to a specific webshop at all depends first on whether the EAA is applicable, which can be checked via whether the accessibility law applies to a webshop.