Okay, Iām going to soapbox now and youāre not going to like it. But the fact is you are wrong. So wrong.Ā
The problem with autoplay has nothing to do with social acceptability or lack thereof. Itās an issue of accessibility and not being a jerk. I say this as someone who works professionally in the web development field.
Autoplay is a thing that should never ever happen.
At its best, autoplay is a horribly intrusive thing. People donāt go to your blogs to listen to whatever music youāve set to autoplay. They go there to read your content. Most people already have music, TV, real life, etc., going on and they donāt need your autoplay music suddenly and unexpectedly blaring out of their speakers. Itās more than annoying. Itās disruptive.
āWell then people donāt have to come to my blog,ā someone might say. The problem with that is people have no way of knowingĀ if your blog has autoplay before going there. People generally go to websites expecting no sudden noise. So when they click through and hear your autoplay suddenly, itās distracting. Thank goodness for Chrome giving us the little speaker icon because before that it was worse. You had to shuffle through all kinds of tabs to figure out which one was making the noise.
On top of it all, autoplay controls on Tumblr blogs is getting more and more difficult to track down. When you have autoplay and someone canāt find the controls, then youāre being a real jerk. Youāre hurting yourself and your visitors and it basically makes you the rudest of the rude.
Beyond just the rudeness of it all, autoplay violates all web accessibility guidelines. The web operates best when users donāt get any unwanted surprises from their clicks. Autoplay music is an unwanted surprise. Always. There are no ifs ands or buts. There is no āturning it down to make it socially acceptable.ā Itās wrong.
Autoplay can trigger panic attacks. Autoplay can cause people to hurt themselves if they forget their speakers are turned up and they are startled by the sudden loud noise. Autoplay wreaks havoc on visually impaired people who rely on screen readers to navigate the web. These screen readers āsayā the words on the screen out loud, but if your autoplayās running, they may not be able to hear the screen reader.
If you want to have music embedded in your blog, thatās fine. But make sure the autoplay feature is turned off. Because by turning it on, youāre being rude, ableist, and one of the biggest and worst kinds of internet jerks. And quite frankly, I think people are well within their rights to refuse to follow blogs that use autoplay.