Re: Audio control accessibility mechanisms

On 12/11/2019 18:08, Eric Chima wrote:
> Thanks for all the replies, everyone. Just to clarify -- the 
> auto-playing video is the primary content of its page, like YouTube. We 
> produce a lot of videos, which each have their own page. WCAG doesn't 
> seem to have any exceptions for video-specific pages, as far as I can tell.
> 
> YouTube autoplays videos with sound, and as far as I can tell it doesn't 
> have any quick mechanism for muting the video other than the space bar 
> pause. Does YouTube fail this standard? If not, how are they satisfying it?

Depends on a subjective definition of "quick mechanism". Note that the 
normative wording of SC 1.4.2 only talks about there needing to be a 
"mechanism", not necessarily that it need to be "quick" (though the 
understanding document does heavily imply that it should be easily 
reachable). The mechanism could even be part of, say, the user's 
preferences that they set somewhere in their profile (though it may be a 
bit tougher to claim that this is a good and easy to reach mechanism in 
practice).

On a typical YouTube video page, I think it takes about 11 TABs to 
properly reach the play/pause control. It's not a subjective question 
whether you can count that as quick/easy to reach or not, but it's 
certainly requiring less steps than some very complex sites I've come 
across that have tons of focusable elements before the actual player.

And yes, YouTube's use of SPACE as a general keyboard shortcut is, in my 
mind, quite a valid choice too. While some keyboard users will argue 
that it's not ideal as it prevents scrolling a page-ful at a time, I'd 
say its usefulness outweighs its downside there. But as Jonathan Avila 
pointed out, note that this keypress may not work with AT running (but 
then if the user can "quickly" reach the play/pause control, it's not a 
deal breaker).

IMO anyway.

P
-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Tuesday, 12 November 2019 21:30:31 UTC