1.4 Distinguishable - Missing Good sound quality for audio about wcag HOT 4 CLOSED

Official Working Group Response

While poor quality of time-based media is definitely a problem, it is not an accessibility issue, per se. Any user able to perceive that form of content will similarly have difficulty understanding it.

A number of WCAG requirement may help alleviate this issue -- captions will compensate for poor audio, audio descriptions can compensate for poor video -- but WCAG does not specify many qualitative restrictions on source content, instead focusing on a user's ability to use an alternative or use mechanisms to augment the original.

Even if there was a desire to address such poor quality time-based media, there are practical challenges defining a measurable threshold that would not lead to the unwarranted failure of content. For example, what if there happened to be quiet passages? What if a recording was made in a necessarily noisy environment?

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I'd add that as this is asking about a new/additional requirement, it's out of scope for WCAG 2.x and should be punted to/discussed in WCAG3

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Done

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The AGWG has reviewed the comment marked Draft response and has adopted as the official working group response. It has been updated as such, and as per our process this issue is being closed.

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