What does the ACB text-to-speech guideline require when audio description is synthetic, and what do Netflix v2.5, ACB 2009 and the HTML spec say or leave unsaid about synthetic voices?
ACB's TTS guideline is a policy statement: human-voiced AD is preferred, TTS only when human narration is not feasible and never purely to save cost, with human review (including blind and low-vision professionals), audience disclosure and quality targets (48 kHz/24-bit preferred). The Netflix v2.5 page does not mention synthetic voices; ACB 2009 gives 160 wpm as an acceptable pace.
ACB's TTS guideline is a policy statement: human-voiced AD is preferred, TTS only when human narration is not feasible and never purely to save cost, with human review (including blind and low-vision professionals), audience disclosure and quality targets (48 kHz/24-bit preferred). The Netflix v2.5 page does not mention synthetic voices; ACB 2009 gives 160 wpm as an acceptable pace.
Curator qualifications: Guides read 2026-10-22; no description written or voiced. Undated ACB page; HTML track kind=descriptions (S16) from producer reading.
Limitations: Guides read 2026-10-22; no description written or voiced.
Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.
Structured fields
{
"citations": [
{
"url": "https://adp.acb.org/docs/ADP_Standards.pdf",
"note": "ACB Guidelines for Use of Text-to-Speech (bytes equal pin); Netflix AD Style Guide v2.5, whole page; ACB 2009 PDF L507"
},
{
"url": "https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/media.html",
"note": "ACB Guidelines for Use of Text-to-Speech (bytes equal pin); Netflix AD Style Guide v2.5, whole page; ACB 2009 PDF L507"
},
{
"url": "https://www.acb.org/guidelines-for-use-of-text-to-speech-tts",
"note": "ACB Guidelines for Use of Text-to-Speech (bytes equal pin); Netflix AD Style Guide v2.5, whole page; ACB 2009 PDF L507"
},
{
"url": "https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/215510667-Audio-Description-Style-Guide-v2-5",
"note": "ACB Guidelines for Use of Text-to-Speech (bytes equal pin); Netflix AD Style Guide v2.5, whole page; ACB 2009 PDF L507"
}
]
}Evidence claims
- [sourced_fact] ACB's TTS guideline is a policy statement: human-voiced AD is preferred, TTS only when human narration is not feasible and never purely to save cost, with human review (including blind and low-vision professionals), audience disclosure and quality targets (48 kHz/24-bit preferred). The Netflix v2.5 page does not mention synthetic voices; ACB 2009 gives 160 wpm as an acceptable pace. · locator: ACB Guidelines for Use of Text-to-Speech (bytes equal pin); Netflix AD Style Guide v2.5, whole page; ACB 2009 PDF L507 source
Rights
| component | license | hosting | redistribution | modification | training | Evidence and notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| documentation | unknown | permitted | permitted | unknown | unknown | Applies to this original summary only, not to the cited sources. |