Media plays sound automatically

Why it matters

Sound that starts by itself drowns out the screen reader a blind visitor needs in order to find the stop button.

Who it affects: Deaf and hard-of-hearing people, screen reader users whose speech is drowned out by audio, and people with vestibular or attention disorders affected by motion.

What Lumtera flags

Audio and video that autoplay with sound (video that is also muted is fine).

Check ID media-autoplay-audio — use it to filter the content report or with wp lumtera issues --rule.

How to fix it in WordPress

Turn off "Autoplay" in the Audio or Video block settings. If a video must start by itself, also turn on "Muted" so it plays silently.

Example

<video src="intro.mp4" autoplay></video>

<video src="intro.mp4" autoplay muted controls></video>

How to check your fix

1. Update the post. The issue disappears from the Accessibility sidebar on the next check, and from the site report on the next scan.
2. Play the page with the sound off, then with a screen reader on. Speech should be captioned, nothing should play sound by itself, and anything that moves should be stoppable.