Corporate interview film in Dubai the delivery specification set at brief stage

Three files are in question, and they are three different work products.

A caption file is a timed text track that plays with the film. WCAG defines captions as a synchronized visual or text alternative for speech and non-speech audio needed to understand the content, which is where captions part company with subtitles. A subtitle file carries dialogue. A caption file carries sound effects, music, speaker identification and location too.

An audio description is narration added to the soundtrack to describe important visual details that cannot be understood from the soundtrack alone. In standard audio description it goes into pauses that already exist in the dialogue.

The third file is a transcript, which the UAE Design System's content guideline asks for alongside closed captions.

All of it engages through one classification. WCAG defines synchronized media as audio or video synchronized with another format for presenting information, and a person speaking to camera is exactly that.

One technical fact puts the audio description in the brief. W3C's technique for delivering an audio description as a timed text track records that the cues have to fit the gaps available in the audio, and that where there is not enough time to synthesize the description inside a cue's interval the user agent may truncate the speech. W3C lists it as Advisory rather than Sufficient. Those gaps are a property of the cut.

Where the line between a brand film and a corporate video matters, brand film production in Dubai draws it.

Term-search the twenty English pages. Caption, zero. Subtitle, zero. Audio description, zero. Transcript, zero. Multimedia, zero.

That is about this document only. Its annex does reach hearing and vision, through a sign language feature and alternative text for graphics, and two guidelines name video without saying what makes one accessible.

So the duty arrives through the WCAG reference, and that reference is not one rule. WCAG is named in seven provisions, from an example in Article 2 to Article 10's must, which names no version and no level. Annex 1 item 1 is the only place a conformance level attaches to a requirement: all public service sites must comply with Level AA of the WCAG 2.1.

Three things about that sentence. The annex's own introduction calls its contents key guidelines, based on best practices and recommended procedures for government entities. Article 9 pulls it back in by requiring compliance. And public service site, the phrase it attaches to, is defined nowhere in an instrument that defines fourteen other terms.

Criterion 1.2.2, Captions, is Level A. Criterion 1.2.3, Audio Description or Media Alternative, is Level A and can be satisfied by a full text alternative instead of a description. Criterion 1.2.5, Audio Description, is Level AA.

The part that decides it for an interview film is narrower than it looks. W3C publishes a Sufficient Technique, G203, for both 1.2.3 and 1.2.5. It applies to videos of only a speaker in front of an unchanging background, where no important visual details warrant description, and it is discharged by a static text alternative carrying the environment, the credits and the name in the lower third. Its carve-out is explicit. It does not apply where multiple speakers are identified on screen as they speak while their identity is not evident in the audio, and W3C says audio description should be used there.

So the question is about the film rather than the standard. Does it carry visual information its audio does not, and are the speakers introduced in the audio or only in the graphics. We have established no answer to that for any given interview film.

Two consequences hold either way. Level AA conformance requires the Level A criteria too, so a caption file is inside any AA claim. And conformance is claimed for full pages only, so one uncaptioned film stops its page claiming AA.

The policy's body and annex say WCAG 2.1, its footnote cites 2.0, and the Competent Authority's own statement names 2.2 AA. It changes nothing, because the three criteria are identical across all three. Name the version and the level on your delivery list, since the instruments will not.

Two limbs of the do-not-embed instruction, turning the file off and choosing a language, are properties of the page and the player rather than of the film. EN 301 549 makes that split explicit, separating the player's ability to display captions from the content's provision of them. It appears in none of the National Policy, TDRA's Digital Government Enablers Annex or the Design System's accessibility guideline, and is explanatory only.

On a self-hosted page the ask is the web platform's own default. The HTML Living Standard enumerates the kinds of timed text track, three of which matter here: subtitles, captions, and descriptions, the last defined as textual descriptions of the video intended for audio synthesis rather than a recorded stem. So the Level AA item has two possible shapes, a mixed audio track and a text file the player reads aloud.

Each page below is authority about its own product on the date it was read. YouTube lists WebVTT among its advanced caption formats rather than its basic ones, and its audio description product is a recorded audio-only file gated to creators with multi-language audio. Vimeo is the closest match to the UAE instruction of anything tested: it specifies caption formats down to the timecode separator and names the viewer control. LinkedIn's captions page requires an SRT file to be attached before the video is posted, does not name WebVTT, and documents no second language track and no viewer toggle. Recruitment films are the subject of employer branding video.

So the buyer's question is which destination the compliance claim attaches to, and that is answerable in one email at brief stage.

Every item below is answerable before a shoot date is held.

Ask whoever owns the website whether the page claims Level AA and which WCAG version it names. Ask separately whether an audio description is in scope, and ask what decides it: does the film carry visual information the audio does not, and are the speakers introduced in the audio or only by an on-screen graphic. Put the three files on the delivery list with a format against each, and name the destination, since it decides the format and whether a second language track and a description slot exist. Tell the editor before picture lock if a description is in scope, because standard audio description sits in the existing gaps in the dialogue, and where those are too short WCAG's route is extended audio description, at Level AAA.

Post-production, meaning edit and grade, is about a third of a job, and all three files are post items, so they belong on the quote as scoped items rather than assumptions. The bands sit in video production cost in Dubai. Our own position is that subtitles, Arabic or accessibility work are included or charged depending on the job, which is why the scope is a brief-stage conversation. We have established no figure for what any of the three adds to a post budget. Name all three on the schedule: the client owns the finished film, raw files come on request, and these are deliverables too.

One procurement line, labelled as the reasoning it is. TDRA publishes an RFP annex whose tables are headed as requirements a bidder's solution shall address, and one Service Design item reads in full that the service shall take into consideration the accessibility standards. It names no conformance level and nothing about a film, so the step to a caption file in a video brief is an inference. We have established no UAE tender or contract requiring one.

The rest sits elsewhere in the Journal: filming inside an office in filming permits in Dubai, and consent and usage in filming people in Dubai and video usage rights and ownership.

Three files decide whether an interview film can sit on a page claiming Level AA: a caption track, a transcript and an audio description. The UAE's National Policy for Digital Accessibility uses none of those words across twenty English pages, and the duty arrives only through its WCAG reference. Captions are Level A and are inside any AA claim already. Audio description is where the levels separate, and W3C's own technique lets a single speaker against an unchanging background be discharged with a paragraph of text, while taking that route away the moment speakers are named only on screen. For a private company outside Article 3's federal applies-to list the English says should and best efforts, the Arabic obliges the same effort, and neither is a conformance requirement. Dubai separately prohibits denial of reasonable accommodation and names no caption. And the destination decides the file as much as the film does, which is why all of it belongs in the brief.