Integrating Auto Play Video Into Homepage

Question

I'm working on integrating video into a homepage. I am mainly wondering about video accessibility constraints. Ideally I want the video to autoplay when the page loads and loop when the video ends. A play/pause button will be overlayed on top of the video. Wondering if the play/pause button would be sufficient? Can the video loop & autoplay if the play/pause button is present? Also wondering about video length... ideally the video would be about 10-20sec. Is this too long? Some sources say video should be capped at 5 seconds, but I have seen many websites that have longer video than that.

Answer

To answer your first question, providing user controls to pause, stop, or hide the movement (i.e. video) would be in conformance with WCAG. This is defined in the WCAG 2.0 Level A success criterion 2.2.2: Pause, Stop, Hide: if information presented in parallel with other content starts moving automatically and moves for more than five seconds, controls must be provided for a user to pause, stop, or hide the movement (unless essential to the activity, but that does not seem to be the case in this instance). One motivating factor behind this rule is that moving content can be distracting for some people. Additionally, if the video being played has an audio component to it and/or relays important information, proper transcripts and audio descriptions will need to be provided.

For the second part of your question around total video length there are no current WCAG guidelines around these parameters. An important aspect to think about when choosing the video length is how will it affect your page load speeds and will there be any detriments to user experience on other parts of the site.

 

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