- From: Jeanne Spellman <jeanne@w3.org>
- Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 16:24:07 -0500
- To: UAWG <w3c-wai-ua@w3.org>
This came to public comments today. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Locating the source of unexpected sound from web sites Resent-Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 17:56:23 +0000 Resent-From: public-uaag2-comments@w3.org Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 18:53:51 +0100 From: Christophe Strobbe <strobbe@hdm-stuttgart.de> To: public-uaag2-comments@w3.org CC: strobbe@hdm-stuttgart.de Hi, Below is an issue for which it may be worth adding a criterion to UAAG 2.0. I am quoting a message by Dana Mulvany that was forwarded to another mailing list [1]: <quote> One problem that nearly everyone faces from having multiple windows open on one's computer or Chromebook is the difficulty of locating where unexpected sounds are coming from. People with partial hearing loss can have even more difficulty with this because they may not be able to make out enough of the words to get a hint of where to look to find the web site generating the sound. I myself have often lost a great deal of time looking through all my open tabs in Chromebook to try to find out where undesired sound is coming from. (Often it's from a web site that eventually opens up a wholly unexpected, unauthorized and undesired video advertisement.) I think just about *everyone* would benefit from some kind of assistance locating where the sound is coming from. (Undesired sound wastes bandwidth, for one thing, and prevents us from hearing important audible notifications from other websites.) Sometimes these sounds are from Facebook, which provides an audible notification that someone is messaging us/chatting with us on Facebook. (Facebook automatically converts a message into a live chat if we are online at the time that a message is sent to us.) </quote> Someone pointed out that Chrome can be launched with in a specific way to make a sound icon appear over the favicon for the site in the tab.[2] However, an easy way to locate tabs where sound is playing seems like a useful accessibility feature for browsers in general. Apparently, the issue is also important enough to inspire an XKCD comic: <http://xkcd.com/1280/>. [1] <http://lists.gpii.net/pipermail/architecture/2013-October/001473.html>. [2] See <http://lists.gpii.net/pipermail/architecture/2013-October/001474.html>, which refers to <http://www.ghacks.net/2013/08/01/google-chrome-enable-tab-audio-notifiers-in-all-versions/>. Best regards, Christophe -- Christophe Strobbe Akademischer Mitarbeiter Adaptive User Interfaces Research Group Hochschule der Medien Nobelstraße 10 70569 Stuttgart Tel. +49 711 8923 2749
Received on Tuesday, 5 November 2013 21:24:05 UTC