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http://www.w3.org/mid/B6CB855C5769484F862F4FB2CCFA50F402D545A7@VHAISHMSGJ2.vha.med.va.gov The Audio Element No provision appears to be made for simple visual alternatives to indicate that audio is playing to let a deaf user know. This is not the same as a caption or a transcript, but would be the ability to provide a quick indicator of important sound effects, or even just to let the user know that there is a piece of music looping in the background. Without a way to provide this kind of information, users with hearing impairment could miss vital audio cues, or could inadvertently annoy people nearby because the machine they are using has its speakers blaring a midi loop of "Mary Had A Little Lamb". [split out from bug 13590]
This appears to be entirely a user-agent issue. (And it would be a good idea even for full-hearing people, since no one wants to madly hunt through all their tabs looking for which site decided to start blaring music.)
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document: http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html Status: Rejected Change Description: no spec change Rationale: UI issue.
Moved to HTML A11y TF component.
User agent issue - some browsers implement this already.
Most browsers have implemented this: Chrome, Firefox, and Safari at least.