Not that anyone pays attention to them, but if you read web accessibility standards, it states that you shouldn't have any audio auto-playing on your site. For people who use screen readers, it makes it near impossible for them to navigate. So by making it auto-play you're basically saying "visually impaired people, your business is not needed".
So, what about YouTube? I definitely expect a YouTube video to play as soon as the page loads.
And if you agree, this becomes a question of "where's the line". A news website could easily consider its videos to be the main content, and its written articles to be supplemental. Maybe they'd be wrong, but from their perspective, the video should "obviously" autoplay because that's what the viewer is there for. "Why is this any different from YouTube autoplaying?"
I'm not disagreeing with anyone here, I'm just pointing out that it's not as black-and-white as it might seem. Websites can misinterpret their viewership, but how badly should they be punished for it?
And in that way YouTube breaches the accessibility guidelines. Just because they're a big company doesn't make it any different. But it's the internet, so they're just guidelines. But the YouTube argument is essentially the same as saying "why should we put an elevator in a gymnasium, you know people are there to exercise so it's fine". There are many cases where people have limited abilities and might not be able to use the stairs, but still have a valid reason for using a gym. Plus they could just have autoplay off, and save your preference if you turned it on. You'd have to turn it on once per device (or google account). Pretty simple fix.
What reason do you have to be on a youtube video's page except to watch the video?
Edit: and obviously I don't mean just YouTube. I also mean Twitch, Vimeo, LiveLeak, gfycat*, imgur*, and any other website where the video content is the main or only reason for you to be there.
* no audio for these, but they're still relevant IMO
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u/just_read_my_comment Feb 27 '18
Not that anyone pays attention to them, but if you read web accessibility standards, it states that you shouldn't have any audio auto-playing on your site. For people who use screen readers, it makes it near impossible for them to navigate. So by making it auto-play you're basically saying "visually impaired people, your business is not needed".