Level A · WCAG 2.0
1.4.2 Audio Control
Audio that starts by itself and runs longer than three seconds needs a way to pause it or turn it down, independently of the system volume.
Partly automated Some failures are detectable, others need judgement.
How it fails in practice
A hero video with sound on by default and a mute button that only appears on hover.
How to fix it
Do not autoplay with sound. If you must, put a visible, keyboard-reachable pause control first in the page — before anything a user would otherwise reach with the audio still playing.
At a glance
- Level
- Level A — the minimum. Failing one of these usually makes something impossible rather than merely hard.
- Principle
- Perceivable
- Guideline
- 1.4 Distinguishable
- Added in
- WCAG 2.0
- EN 301 549
- 9.1.4.2
- Automated check
- Partly automated
Partly automated
How far an automated check gets
A tool finds some failures here and cannot see the rest. A clean automated result means the checks that exist found nothing — not that the criterion is met. This is the gap that makes a green scan look like an accessible site, and it is where the keyboard agent, the agents still in development and a human reviewer do the remaining work.
Rules that check this criterion
no-autoplay-audio<video> or <audio> elements must not play automatically
The rule ids are axe-core’s (version 4.14.0), the open-source engine our scan runs, and our keyboard agent’s — the names a report or a CI log will show. An underlined id has a page of its own here.
Related criteria
Other criteria under the same guideline.
Find out which criteria your site fails
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