2.16 Take a More Sustainable Approach to Media Assets

Video and audio-heavy websites are often those that can have significant sustainability costs in terms of storage and carbon intensity for viewers who have to process the media with their devices to watch them (draining batteries). Optimizing such assets as much as possible is critical for a sustainable product or service.

Criteria

Need For Media: The need for video or sound usage (including only when they add visitor value) has been determined, and non-informative media (background media) including autoplaying functionality has been banned or removed.
Optimize Media: Compress the media according to the visitor’s requirements, select the appropriate format, ensure it works across browsers, and avoid embedded player plugins.
Lazy Loading: Any media requiring a lot of data to be downloaded on the client side (including the media itself) has been loaded behind a facade (a non-functional, static, representational element).
Labels And Choice: Let the visitor control media deactivation, giving a choice of resolutions; all while providing alternative resolutions and formats. Also increase visitor awareness by informing them of the length, format, and weight of the media.
Management And Usage: Set up a media management and use policy to reduce the overall impact of audio and video, with criteria for media compression and file formats.

Impact

High

Effort

Medium

Benefits

Environmental:
Media assets like audio and video can be very resource-hungry. Reducing battery-draining events such as loading high-effort content until the moment it is required can have savings in terms of pure processing and displaying of the media.
Social Equity:
Providing alternatives to bandwidth-hungry media will assist those unable to benefit due to their environment.
Accessibility:
Delivering media assets in ways that convey information in an easy-to-read manner both visually and contextually (even if people are unable to for example see), will allow a wider audience to gain from your content.
Performance:
Catering your experience to the device, situation, and environment of the visitor will reduce wasted bandwidth (for example, sending a lower resolution for less capable devices). As such, the data savings will translate into a performance boost for those taking advantage of the reduced capabilities.
Economic:
Being able to avoid media entirely and rely on options such as transcripts will provide huge financial rewards for those who pay for the bandwidth they consume or serve.

GRI

materials: High
energy: High
water: High
emissions: High

Example

Code:

WEBVTT

00:01.000 --> 00:04.000
- Never drink liquid nitrogen.

00:05.000 --> 00:09.000
- It will perforate your stomach.
- You could die.

Web Video Text Tracks Format.

Resources

View the Guideline