Perceivable · Level A · 1.4.2
Audio Control
If a page plays audio automatically for more than 3 seconds, there has to be a way to pause or stop it, or to control its volume independently of the system volume.
- Blind
- Deaf / hard of hearing
- Cognitive
How to recognize it
Load the page and listen: background music, an autoplaying video with sound, an audio ad — anything that starts making noise on its own without the user asking for it, and that keeps going past 3 seconds, is a candidate failure unless there's a visible, reachable control to stop it. Screen reader users are hit hardest, since autoplaying audio competes directly with the speech output they depend on to use the page at all, and there's often no way to 'look past' background noise the way a sighted user might visually ignore it. It also affects people who are hard of hearing and rely on the little audio clarity they do have, and anyone with a cognitive or attention-related disability who finds it hard to concentrate on reading while unrelated sound is playing.
How to fix it
Simplest fix: don't autoplay audio. If a design genuinely needs sound to start automatically, provide a pause/stop control that's reachable right at the start of the page — not buried after other content — or a way to adjust that audio's volume independently of the operating system's overall volume. Muting a `<video>` or `<audio>` element by default and letting the user opt in to sound satisfies this without any extra control needed, since nothing is playing that needs to be stopped.
Example
Avoid
<audio src="background-music.mp3" autoplay loop></audio>
<!-- plays indefinitely with no way to pause or mute it -->Prefer
<audio src="background-music.mp3" autoplay loop controls></audio>
<!-- native controls give pause and volume --><video src="promo.mp4" autoplay muted controls></video>
<!-- starts silent; sound is opt-in -->