What is accessibility?
If you've ever used the space bar to pause or play a video online, you've used an accessibility feature. Accessibility provides an inclusive experience for people of all abilities to consume the same content.
Accessibility standards address a wide range of needs, including physical impairments, difficulty with fine motor skills, colorblindness, low or limited vision, and cognitive impairments. Users should not be limited in their ability to view content, and accessibility work aims to improve the web experience for all.
How do we make our player accessible?
Our player complies with WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards. We'll outline our accessibility features below.
Accessibility checklist
When customizing a Wistia video, you'll see an "Accessibility checklist" tab in the Customize menu.
Screen-reader legible: Wistia is compatible with screen readers such as VoiceOver (Apple), TalkBack (Android), and JAWS (Windows).
Keyboard compatible: The player is fully functional with the keyboard alone and built to support various assistive technologies on both desktop and mobile.
High-contrast player color: The player color is accessible by default, and we offer an accessible color chooser via the Customize menu. Learn more about the minimum WCAG contrast requirements here.
Thumbnail alt-text: A description of the thumbnail can be added via the Customize panel.
Play button visible: Player controls such as the play button, volume, settings, and captions are persistent in the play bar.
Captions enabled: We integrate with a third-party service to generate automated captions and ensure transcriptions across your entire account. Note that transcripts in Wistia are text-based—they don't read aloud on their own. Viewers can use a screen reader or browser read-aloud tool to have them spoken.
Audio descriptions: Audio Descriptions are alternate audio tracks that narrate important video content that blind or low-vision viewers would otherwise be unable to access. You can read more about Audio Descriptions here.
Accessible play bar
The Wistia play bar is designed to be simple and easy to navigate, with transparent color options that ensure an accessible contrast ratio. Additionally, the video duration is persistently displayed in the bottom left corner of the play bar.
Multiple player languages
We offer multiple player languages based on viewer language selection. Review our Transcripts and Captions overview to learn more.
An accessible mobile player
In addition to an accessible desktop player, Wistia has an accessible mobile player. Here’s what makes our mobile player easy for anyone to use:
High-contrast play bar
Skip ahead and back by 10 seconds
Large mobile controls
Ellipses show and hide controls once the play bar has reached 60% (easier to see content vs play bar as needed)
Stacking/vertical animation to show you where the controls appear once you interact with the player
Suppressed player branding on mobile to maximize space for content and player controls
Default player color is a deep, high-contrast blue
Tip
Check out our blog post for more insights: Video Accessibility: How to Make Your Video Content Accessible
Accessibility audits
The Wistia video player has been audited by a third party (Deque) to meet WCAG 2.1 AA. This audit applies specifically to the Wistia video player. Other surfaces like Channels and the Wistia web app have not been audited in the same way. Wistia is certified to WCAG 2.1 AA specifically. We don't currently offer a VPAT or ACR.
The European Accessibility Act (EAA)
The EAA took effect on June 28, 2025. Wistia's player hasn't been separately audited to EN 301 549, but the web-content portion of the EAA is identical to WCAG 2.1 AA, which the player is certified for. Note that audio descriptions and captions are required for recorded video under the EAA, and all accessibility features should be available in the same language as the core video.
Check out this blog post to learn more about the EAA and Wistia videos.
Accessibility issues
If an accessibility scanner (Axe, SiteImprove, Level Access, etc.) flags an issue—like a landmark or nested-control warning on a page with a Wistia embed—we'll need to gather some additional information to troubleshoot. Send us the link where the video is embedded, which part of the player is affected, and the screen reader/OS/ tool you used. This helps us reproduce the issue and determine next steps.