November 2025: Audio Description Tracks in Streaming Manifests - Actions Required – Swank Motion Pictures, Inc.

Overview

Swank Cloud Streaming will introduce updates to streaming manifests that include audio description (AD) tracks.
This change supports our WCAG 2.1 AA compliance initiative under federal accessibility requirements, with full compliance required by April 24, 2026.

Starting in March 2026, streaming manifests in Production will start to include both a main audio track and an audio description track for supported titles. Partners with custom players will need to support these new manifests to avoid user confusion or additional issues.

If you only use the Swank Cloud Streaming Portal UI and our integrated player, no changes will be required.

Initially, only a limited amount of content will have audio description from our represented Studios. This quantity will grow overtime as the audio tracks become available and processed into our Cloud Platform. Keep in touch with your Account Representative for more information on additional availability.

What’s Changing

Partners consuming our API for streaming content links will begin to see two audio tracks for the same language (for example en-US).

DASH Manifest Example (Windows / Android)

<!-- Main English audio -->
<AdaptationSet mimeType="audio/mp4" lang="en-US">
  <Role schemeIdUri="urn:mpeg:dash:role:2011" value="main"/>
</AdaptationSet>

<!-- English descriptive audio -->
<AdaptationSet mimeType="audio/mp4" lang="en-US">
  <Role schemeIdUri="urn:mpeg:dash:role:2011" value="description"/>
  <Accessibility schemeIdUri="urn:tva:metadata:cs:AudioPurposeCS:2007" value="1"/>
</AdaptationSet>

Key takeaways

lang="en-US" – Both sets are identified as English (U.S.).
<Role … value="main"/> – Identifies the primary audio track.
<Role … value="description"/> – Explicitly identifies the audio description track.

HLS Manifest Example (Apple devices)

#EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=AUDIO,GROUP-ID="audio/mp4a.40.2",LANGUAGE="en-US",
NAME="English",AUTOSELECT=YES,DEFAULT=YES,CHANNELS="2",
URI="audio-en-US.m3u8"

#EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=AUDIO,GROUP-ID="audio/mp4a.40.2",LANGUAGE="en-US",
NAME="English – Audio Description",AUTOSELECT=NO,DEFAULT=NO,CHANNELS="2",
URI="audio-en-US-x-ad.m3u8",
CHARACTERISTICS="public.accessibility.describes-video"

Key takeaways

LANGUAGE="en-US" – The descriptive track is still identified as English (U.S.).
NAME="English – Audio Description" – Provides a clear, human-readable label for the player’s UI.
CHARACTERISTICS="public.accessibility.describes-video" – The critical machine-readable flag indicating the track’s accessibility purpose.

Action Required

Cloud Streaming partners with their own video players should complete the following by March 2026:

Review and test integration with the updated manifest structure.
Verify playback across all relevant platforms to your products (Windows, Android, Apple TV / iOS).
Confirm that audio description appears correctly in your player’s language or audio selection menu.
Validate that no duplicate or unlabeled audio tracks appear for the same language.

Failure to implement these updates may result in duplicate or misidentified audio tracks and inconsistent playback behavior.