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Re: Media player/recorder accessibility

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From: Swift, Daniel P.
Date: Nov 15, 2018 6:25AM

Isabel:

Regarding the playing/recording, it sounds like you are trying to do a multitrack recording. It's been a number of years since I used ProTools, but the transport UI for that was hit record which would then flash repeatedly (slow pulse) until you hit the play button. At this point, you were playing back audio that was already captured while recording a new track. To me (and growing up with pressing play and record buttons simultaneously) this makes sense.

Are you envisioning a substantial number of different controls between the player and the recorder?

Dan Swift
Senior Web Specialist
Enterprise Services
West Chester University
610.738.0589

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of glen walker
Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2018 3:28 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Media player/recorder accessibility

If you have two buttons for play/pause, you get into some weird situations such as after selecting play, does it become disabled because the audio is already playing? And if so, do you leave the focus on the play button even if it's disabled? If you move the focus to the pause button, that might violate 3.2.2 because a "change of context" is defined as moving the focus unexpectedly (see https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/consistent-behavior-unpredictable-change.html#context-changedef
).

I think it's a pretty common UI to have one button that toggles. The image on the button usually switches between a right-facing triangle (play) and two vertical bars (pause). The aria-label of the button would have to change *and* you'd need an aria-live region to announce "play" or "pause"
since the changing of the aria-label is not announced.

For volume, yes I would do a slider. The number of stop points is up to you. Youtube has 20 increments.

When you say the user is playing and recording at the same time, do you literally mean they pressed the record button and the play button at the same time? Or do you mean that the user has two tasks to perform, recording and playing, but they won't be doing both at exactly the same time? If you go back to the 80's and tape decks, there was a play button and a record button on the same panel. You couldn't do both at the same time. Not sure if that analogy fits your case - having one play/pause button and having a separate record button. The user can record something, press stop (which might be different from pause - you can pause a recording, get a drink, then continue recording, or press stop if you're completely done, but maybe that's a relic of the 80's tape deck), then press play to hear the recording.

Glen