Re: Audio control accessibility mechanisms

Hi Eric,

On 11/11/19 23:13, Eric Chima wrote:
> My organization has a large number of auto-playing videos on its
> pages, and no easy mechanism to mute them. This seems to violate the
> audio control rule (1.4.2), so I've been looking for the best
> mechanism to rectify that.

Muted videos that last longer than 5 seconds would also fail SC 2.2.2
(level A): https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/#pause-stop-hide.

>
> The ideal solution would be to play videos muted until the user
> unmutes them, but I'm not sure that will fly. The suggested technique
> on the WCAG page is to have a control near the beginning of the page
> that mutes all audio (which is an avenue I could pursue), but the
> other option I was considering is to just have the space bar pause the
> video, the same way YouTube does.

This works on YouTube because that site puts the keyboard focus on the
video when a page is loaded. This makes sense on YouTube, but if videos
are not the main focus of your website, I don't know why user would
expect the space bar to behave in the same way as on YouTube. I *think*
users would navigate to the video to pause it.

> This wouldn't be spelled out on the page, so I guess the question is
> whether the "space bar pause" has entered the web interaction lexicon
> enough that users just know to do it. If that's the case, then maybe
> the space bar pause is easier than tabbing through the page to find a
> "mute all" button while a video is playing.

I checked cnn.com, where you can start a video using the space bar (if
you can guess whether it has keyboard focus) but not stop or pause it
using the space bar.
On msnbc.com, the keyboard has no effect on video playback (you can't
see whether keyboard focus is on a video, but when it is, the space bar
has no effect).
You can use the space bar to start and pause videos on DemocracyNow.org,
but that's because that site uses embedded YouTube videos.

Obviously, this is not a representative sample. But I wouldn't bet that
users are sufficiently aware of the "space bar pause" as a mechanism.

Best regards,

Christophe Strobbe

>
> Is the space bar pause a satisfactory resolution to this problem? Am I
> missing an obvious problem with it? Or is there a better option that
> people are already using that I just don't know about?
>
> Thanks,
> Eric


-- 
Christophe Strobbe
Akademischer Mitarbeiter
Responsive Media Experience Research Group (REMEX)
Hochschule der Medien
Nobelstraße 10
70569 Stuttgart
Tel. +49 711 8923 2749

“I drink tea and I know things.” 
Falsely attributed to Christophe Lannister.

Received on Tuesday, 12 November 2019 12:07:35 UTC