Media plays sound automatically

Why does it matter?

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 does Lumtera flag?

Audio that autoplays is an error. Video that autoplays without being muted is for review, because whether the file has a sound track is not in the page (video that is muted is fine). Clips of three seconds or less are skipped, and a player with its own controls or a Pause or Mute button is for review.

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

How do I 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 do I check the fix?

1. Update the post. The issue disappears from the Lumtera 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.