Video accessibility at Vimeo
Enabling professional-quality video for all
Updated: June 17, 2025
Our aim at Vimeo is, and always has been, to enable professional-quality video for all. That means empowering everyone to express themselves through video. Our approach to accessibility has evolved into creating innovative services that are accessible by design. We’ve made some great progress, but we realize there’s still more to do.
Our goal
A crucial part of our approach to accessibility is offering a fully accessible player that can reach any audience. Our goal is to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA, which are a set of web standards that ensure accessibility for people with disabilities and are incorporated into the EN 301 549 standard.
We believe everyone should have full access to video content, regardless of visible or invisible, temporary or permanent disabilities (auditory, cognitive, physical, speech, or visual). Accessibility benefits us all, and we're committed to making professional-quality video available to everyone.
To achieve this, we will:
- Integrate inclusive design into all customer-facing changes through training and standards;
- Seek to influence our suppliers, partnering with organizations that share our dedication to inclusion;
- Actively listen to our users to improve current features and discover new ways to enhance accessibility and convenience.
Our approach to video accessibility
Vimeo ensures that our platform is accessible for our users in the following ways:
- Comprehensive captions and transcripts: Vimeo allows creators to upload caption and subtitle files to any video. To turn on captions or subtitles when viewing a video, simply click the “CC” button in the player's bottom toolbar. Our transcript services provide text alternatives for spoken audio. Our integrated viewer also lets you search transcripts to jump to specific moments in a video.
- Visual clarity: Our player has strong color contrast (AA standard) and lets you resize text and adjust spacing for better readability on any screen or device orientation.
- Screen reader support: All video elements are compatible with popular screen readers like JAWS and NVDA. We test our products across major platforms, including Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android.
- Audio descriptions: We provide audio descriptions to make visual content accessible for people who are blind or have low vision.
- Keyboard navigation: Control the player with your keyboard using shortcuts. We also clearly highlight active elements with a high-contrast box.
- Predicable design: Our player's navigation and interactions are consistent, making it easy to learn and use for all users, including those with cognitive disabilities. We also provide clear information and ensure input fields work well with assistive technologies.
Our commitment to ongoing improvement
We are committed to making video content accessible to all users. While we have made meaningful progress, accessibility is an ongoing effort, and we recognize that some areas of our platform do not yet fully conform to accessibility standards such as WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
We are actively working to address the following known limitations:
- Image alternatives: Image alternatives are sometimes repeated as text. We are improving image alternative text to follow accessibility best practices and avoid redundancy.
- Landmarks: Not all page content is contained within landmark regions. We are enhancing the structural markup of our pages so all sections are properly navigable by assistive technologies.
These issues do not reflect the full scope of potential limitations. If you encounter an accessibility barrier not listed here, or require support accessing any of our services, we welcome your feedback.
To report an issue, request an accommodation, or share suggestions for improvement, please contact our accessibility team at [email protected]. We take all feedback seriously and use it to inform ongoing platform enhancements.