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