• Success Criterion 1.3.4
  • Conformance level AA

Video Player Forcing Landscape Fullscreen for Ordinary Content

1.3.4 — Orientation

Scenario

Setting

A car-rental site's checkout flow

What’s wrong

Video player forcing landscape fullscreen with no portrait playback for non-essential content.

Example 

videoEl.addEventListener('play', () => {
  screen.orientation.lock('landscape');
});

Why it matters

Confirming a rental car mid-checkout, a customer taps to watch the short walkthrough video of the vehicle's features and gets forced into landscape just to finish looking at the car they already chose.

How to test

Rotate to portrait during video playback: if the player forces landscape fullscreen with no portrait playback option for non-essential video, it fails.

How to fix

Let the browser's native fullscreen controls handle rotation preference for the walkthrough video, and reserve orientation locking for content with a genuine functional need.

videoEl.setAttribute('controls', '');

Outcome

A customer with a mounted device can now watch or skip the vehicle walkthrough video and finish checkout without getting stuck in landscape.

Who is affected

Users with fixed-orientation device mounts cannot watch the video or return to checkout, since the forced rotation traps the page in landscape.

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