no-autoplay-audio

Autoplaying audio should provide a pause/stop or volume-control mechanism

manualWCAG 1.4.2 (A)confidence: lowseverity: moderateperceivable

Flags <audio>/<video> elements that autoplay unmuted with no native controls attribute, for manual review against the 3-second exemption in WCAG 1.4.2.

Applies to. Any <audio autoplay> or <video autoplay> element that is not `muted`.

Expectation. SC 1.4.2 only applies when audio plays automatically for MORE than 3 seconds; clip duration is not knowable from static markup (jsdom does not decode media), so this rule cannot determine whether the SC even applies to a given element. It is authored as `type: 'manual'` (cantTell-capped, never fail) on purpose rather than guessing: an autoplaying unmuted element with no `controls` attribute (the native, statically-verifiable mechanism to pause/stop or adjust volume) is flagged for human review rather than treated as a deterministic violation.

Examples

can't tell

<audio autoplay src="x.mp3"></audio>

The audio autoplays unmuted with no `controls` attribute, giving the user no way to pause or stop it.

n/a

<audio autoplay controls src="x.mp3"></audio>

Native `controls` gives the user a pause/volume mechanism.

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