---
name: Audio control
slug: audio-control
category: accessibility
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-26T00:00:00.000Z
definition: A way to stop sound that started on its own, because autoplaying
  audio drowns out the screen reader voice a reader depends on to find the
  control that stops it.
aliases:
  - name: autoplay audio
    source: community
  - name: mute control
    source: community
  - name: sound off by default
    source: community
tags:
  - media
  - sound
  - wcag
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - pause-stop-hide
    - autoplay
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso:
    - media-controls
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: "WCAG 2.2: Audio Control"
    url: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/#audio-control
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: anything makes noise before the reader asked
---

WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.4.2 is unusually blunt for a Level A rule. If any audio plays
automatically for more than three seconds, either it stops itself within those three seconds or the
page provides a way to pause it, stop it, or turn its volume down independently of the system volume.
That is the whole requirement, and the reason it exists is a mechanical one rather than a matter of
taste: a [screen reader](/screen-reader) speaks through the same speakers your autoplaying video is
using, so unexpected sound does not merely annoy that reader, it hides the interface from them.

Follow the loop that creates. The audio starts. The voice the reader navigates by is now competing
with it. To find the mute button they have to hear the voice announce it, and they cannot, so the
only reliable escape is to leave the page or to turn off the system volume, which turns off their
screen reader as well. This is why "independently of the system volume" is in the text of the
criterion: a mute control that only works by silencing the whole machine is not a fix, and it is why
the rule says nothing about how loud the audio is. Speech and music in the same range are still
speech and music in the same range.

Three details decide whether an implementation actually passes. The control has to be near the start
of the page in reading and tab order, because a stop button after the article is a stop button the
reader reaches by listening to the article they cannot hear. It has to have a real
[accessible name](/accessible-name), since an unlabelled icon in a noisy page is unfindable. And the
three seconds are measured from when the sound starts, not from when the page finishes loading, so a
carousel that begins a video on its second slide is inside the same rule.

The safe design is the boring one: sound off by default, and let the reader start it. That covers the
criterion, and it also covers muted autoplay with [captions](/captions), which is what most feeds
have converged on for reasons that have nothing to do with accessibility. Where the sound genuinely
is the content, as in a media player the reader opened on purpose, this criterion does not apply at
all: the reader asked for it, and what they need instead is a reachable pause and a volume they can
find.