1840883 - Audio doesn't play from keyboard input

Status: NEW

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect, P3)

Description

[jesse.greenberg]

Steps to reproduce:

• Navigate to https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/quadrilateral/latest/quadrilateral_all.html
• Tab to the first focusable component WITHOUT pressing enter/spacebar or clicking in the page with mouse.
• Use arrow keys to move it.

Actual results:

The object moves, but no sound plays.

Expected results:

Sound should play from the webpage. The fact that it will only start playing from specific mouse or activation events is poor for accessibility because people that rely on keyboard input will often miss out on audio feedback.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Layout: Form Controls' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

Doesn't really seem like a Form Controls issue; I'm not sure where this belongs, though. It's presumably related to the fact that auto-playing audio is blocked by default. Moving to the A/V component for triage.

Comment 3

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:jimm, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 4

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Interesting bug. May well be expected since the user hasn't interacted with the tab aside from a tab into it.

Comment 5

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

For non-printable keys, currently we only allow space and enter.

Edgar, do you know if the spec defines a full list about what keys should be treated as user gestures? Do you think if it's reasonable to add arrow up/down/left/right into user gesture as well? We initially block those arrow keys in bug 1452536. However, it seems reasonable to me that adding them to user gesture as well because in web game those keys are widely used for control, which should trigger game sound to play as well.

But the only concern is that, using arrow down to scroll page might be distracted if they are not intended to play any media, just wanting to browsing content.

Thanks!

Comment 6

[Edgar Chen [:edgar]]

Yes, it make sense to treat arrow key as user gesture it they are interacting with web content, I think the long-term solution is having a better way to handle browser shortcuts, see bug 1641171.