Do not autoplay
Let people choose if they’re subjected to video content.
Autoplay can be very disruptive or hurt people
- For people using a screen reader, it unexpectedly interferes with their ability to hear/control their machine
- For people with cognitive differences, it can make it impossible to focus
- For people with light sensitivity or vestibular disorders, some video content can cause illness
Is it ever okay?
- Media with audio must absolutely never autoplay
- Just because a video contains controls to stop the video doesn’t mean it’s okay to autoplay
- Silent video can autoplay under these conditions:
- It must stop after 5 seconds
- The video features accessible controls
- Autoplay is disabled when device reduce motion settings are activated
Code examples
A heading can serve as a name
<h2>The Princess Bride</h2>
<video-embed>
</video-embed>An aria-label="Media title" can also be used
<video-embed aria-label="The Princess Bride"></video-embed>Developer notes
Name
- A heading (
<h1><h2><h3>) above the media can serve as a name aria-label="Media title"on a wrapper element can also be used
Role
- Controls must identify as buttons, switches, etc.
- There are accessible video embed options available
Group
- Captions are mandatory for spoken audio content
- Do not rely on auto-captioning
- This may require the manual creation of a VTT file
- There are many options online that will create these for you
- Transcripts should be HTML based (not a PDF)
State
- Controls must identify their state (pressed, checked, selected, value, etc)
Focus
- Focus must be visible