RE: Question about SC 1.4.2 - can this be met by relying on Windows (or otherwise the platform or user agent) to do it for you?

Hi Peter,

Aside from the cloud based AT issue, there is another practical problem with the individual volume control feature in Windows 7. The only way to adjust volume for individual applications is to go into the Volume mixer panel, find the setting for that particular application and adjust it. trying to accomplish these steps with text to speech when a webpage has already started playing some awfully loud music is typically impossible. I am afraid that this cannot be a technique that we should be recommending.


Kiran Kaja
Accessibility Program Manager
Adobe Systems
+447833091999 (Mobile)
+44 1628590005 (Direct)
kkaja@adobe.com<mailto:kkaja@adobe.com>
http://twitter.com/kirankaja12


From: Peter Korn [mailto:peter.korn@oracle.com]
Sent: 26 June 2013 20:39
To: WCAG
Subject: Question about SC 1.4.2 - can this be met by relying on Windows (or otherwise the platform or user agent) to do it for you?

Colleagues,

I was recently reminded that Windows 7 (and perhaps earlier) has a nice feature in the "Volume Mixer" panel, which provides support for independent, per-application setting of the volume level (including per-application muting).  This specifically allows me to turn down or off the volume of all audio coming from my web user agent.

Would you agree that this would be "a mechanism [that] is available to control audio volume independently from the overall system volume level", such that web pages/apps running on Windows 7 could automatically meet SC 1.4.2 Audio Control?

If so, is this perhaps a potential new success technique for us?  Something like "Running on a platform or user agent that allows the volume level to be adjusted or muted either by the user agent or on a per-application basis"?


On the other hand...  would doing this effectively prevent the use of cloud-based AT?  If I'm not mistaken, we typically haven't done a lot in our techniques that contemplates web-delivered/cloud-based AT...


Regards,

Peter
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