1085665 - Video autoplay

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Webtools Graveyard :: Air Mozilla, defect)

Description

[Monique Brunel]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:33.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/33.0
Build ID: 20141011015303

Steps to reproduce:

Open the page https://air.mozilla.org/firefox-os-french-community-party/


Actual results:

The video start automatically (autoplay=true)


Expected results:

The user must click on play to start the video (autoplay=false)

Comment 1

[Monique Brunel]

About accessibility: Don't auto-play video, music and more http://a11yproject.com/posts/never-use-auto-play/

The video "Firefox OS French Community Party" is embed in http://blogzinet.free.fr/blog/index.php?post/2014/09/22/Firefox-OS-en-France-la-soiree-de-lancement When this blog was published in September, the video does not start automatically (confirmed by the blog author).

Today I opened the site http://www.mozfr.org/ that publish this post. The video was launched without the possibility of finding it, so to stop it ... an uncomfortable situation for everyone but dramatic for users of screen reader

Comment 2

[Monique Brunel]

In agreement with the Mozilla Manifesto (The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.), it would be important that Mozilla websites are accessible to all (and therefore meet accessibility guidelines)

About audio control: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#visual-audio-contrast

Comment 3

[Peter Bengtsson [:peterbe]]

Sorry. My bad. 

There was an unrelated bug that when I fixed accidentally switch on autoplay. Oops I thought but the more I looked at it the more I liked it. It's how YouTube works. 

However, before we debate that, I really need to fix it so that the embedded player never autoplays. This definitely should not be the case. Once I've done that, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how YouTube gets away with it?

Comment 4

[[github robot]]

Commit pushed to master at https://github.com/mozilla/airmozilla

https://github.com/mozilla/airmozilla/commit/b8b8ec85c71cff5f04babdcf1b0de82ce3bc167f
bug 1085665 - embedded videos should NOT autoplay ever

Comment 5

[Monique Brunel]

Thanks Peter :-)
And I will do that, of course.

Comment 6

[Peter Bengtsson [:peterbe]]

"Autoplay is a bad idea not just for accessibility but for usability and general sanity while browsing."
http://www.punkchip.com/autoplay-is-bad-for-all-users/

As of my fix mentioned in comment 4, ALL autoplay is OFF now. By default. EXCEPT, if you're viewing an event and (with or without starting the video) you press the little pop-up icon (appears below the lower right-hand corner of the video poster). Then it opens a pop-up with only the video and it starts in autoplay. 

The more I read about this (i.e. skimming various articles quickly) I think I'm convinced it's a bad thing to autoplay. So, it's resolved.

Comment 7

[Peter Bengtsson [:peterbe]]

One interesting idea perhaps. If someone opens a link to an event page with a new tab then we shouldn't autoplay. But maybe they click an event link in the current active tab then we autoplay. This could possibly be figured out by looking at the HTTP REFERER header. 

I often, when say browsing Facebook, click interesting articles/articles with video to load in a background tab that I'll return to later. Those I don't want to autoplay but the single regular clicks I might. 

What do you think?

Comment 8

[Peter Bengtsson [:peterbe]]

See point 3 at the bottom of http://www.punkchip.com/autoplay-is-bad-for-all-users/

"Autoplay is generally acceptable if the user was aware, when they clicked the link, that the proceeding page was going to play a clip"

Comment 9

[Monique Brunel]

Yes. As I said on IRC: The most important is that the video does not start when a page is displayed and without action by the user. Open a pop up window is a choice of the user
I think that that point is acceptable.