[whatwg] Spec should require UAs to have control to mute/ pause audio/ video

[Bruce Lawson]

This may already be in the spec, but I couldn't find it.

I think the spec should explicity require UAs to provide a mehanism to
mute audio and to pause video, even if the controls attribute is not set.

This will be of great benefit to screenreader users, as well as to people
who work in shared environments and who may not be expecting noise.

(There is a precedent for worrying about "mere annoyance": "User agents
should not provide a public API to cause videos to be shown full-screen. A
script, combined with a carefully crafted video file, could trick the user
into thinking a system-modal dialog had been shown, and prompt the user
for a password. There is also the danger of "mere" annoyance, with pages
launching full-screen videos when links are clicked or pages navigated.")

Should autoplay be removed as an attribute of audio and video, precisely
to remove such annoyance from people who rely on aural browsing? While
there are video sites such as youTube that do play videos automatically,
others such as vimeo don't. Is there an archive that lists the use-cases
for autoplay and contrasts it with the "annoyance" and accessibility
issues?.

(see  
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2009/accessibility-of-html5-video-and-audio-elements/)

-- 
Bruce Lawson
Web Evangelist
www.opera.com (work)
www.brucelawson.co.uk (personal)