Re: Audio control accessibility mechanisms

  What about having them not autoplay?

On Tue, Nov 12, 2019 at 7:12 AM Christophe Strobbe <strobbe@hdm-stuttgart.de>
wrote:

> 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.
>
>
>

-- 
*Crystal L. Tenan*
IT Accessibility Coordinator
NC State University
Office of Information Technology
Outreach, Communications & Consulting

P: 919.513.4087
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