Clarify page level or viewport level for 2.2.2 Pause, stop, hide when there are many moving things on a page.

[EmmaDawsonDev]

Some things that are unclear in the understanding docs that a client is asking about.

The client has some pages which are very video-heavy but needs to meet WCAG 2.2 AA level. They are asking if the 5 second rule applies at an individual video level, at a viewport level or at a whole page level and it feels unclear from the current docs since most of the examples only mention one moving thing at a time.

Scenario 1: the user has multiple videos under 5 seconds on the page that start when they scroll into the viewport. Does the 5 second limit apply to each video individually or does it apply as 5 seconds from page load and then everything must stop or have the option to pause, stop or hide?

Scenario 2: there is a video under 5 seconds on the page which autoplays when it comes into the viewport. A user scrolls past it and then scrolls back up the page. Is it ok that the video autoplays for 5 seconds again every time it comes into the viewport?

Scenario 3: There are 6 videos shown in a viewport at once. Each one plays for 5 seconds then stops. Ok because each individual video is shorter than 5 seconds or not?

Scenario 4: There are 6 videos shown in a viewport at once. All autoplay at once and then stop after 5 seconds. The user then scrolls down to another set of videos. Ok for these videos to also play for 5 seconds or not?

Scenario 5: There are many videos on a page that are longer than 5 seconds so have individual controls to pause. Ok to need to pause each one individually or does there need to be a mechanism to stop them all at once?

It would be fantastic if it's possible to include one or more of these examples and clarify on what level this success criteria should apply.

[mbgower]

First, the core answer: Pause, Stop, Hide applies to every occurrence of auto-playing content on a page. Each video would need to be able to be controlled.

For moving, blinking, scrolling, or auto-updating information, all of the following are true

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Proviso: Your scenarios list a number of situations where it would clearly be a bad experience for most people if all of these videos contained audio and they all autostarted at the same time. I cannot imagine anyone would be advocating for multiple videos containing audio playing at the same time, so all other responses here assume that these are video-only; otherwise, if they were longer than 3 seconds, they would also need to be assessed for https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/audio-control.

For option 1, there is no wording in the SC or understanding document about when the videos start playing automatically (except as it relates to a 'page load animation'). Regardless of whether videos start on page load or on when they scroll into view, they are starting automatically. If each is 5 seconds or less, they would pass 2.2.2.

For option 2, the video is playing for no more than 5 seconds, then it stops. Then it is triggered again and plays for no more than 5 seconds. I think many users would be irritated by that behaviour, and I would advocate that you only autoplay it once. But IMO it does not fail 2.2.2 if it autoplays once, stops, then is triggered by an interaction and autoplays again later (as opposed to just being in a loop). I'll point out that triggering the video based on interaction is potentially failing the AAA requirement https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/animation-from-interactions . It depends on what the video is showing.

Option 3, passes. They are all playing for less than 5 seconds.

Option 4 passes. Each video is only autoplaying 5 seconds.

Option 5. The requirement is that each video can be stopped. The SC does not specify a need to stop all video-only videos at once. I would advocate for you to have a single stop button for all of them. For that matter, I would advocate that you not subject your users to a barrage of autoplaying videos on a page. That comes down to a design decision. Even on a site dedicated to reels of videos, the videos do not typically all autostart at the same time.

Regardless, I would advocate that you ensure you are incorporating a check for prefers-reduced-motion, and not autoplay videos based on that.