Yesterday, Aaron Leventhal pointed me to a utility that mutes Flash objects that play automatically. It's called, aptly enough, Flash Mute. I initially thought this was an add-on for Firefox. Instead, it's a tiny app that sits in the system tray, and mutes Flash in almost any browser, including Firefox and Internet Explorer.

The default hot key for mute/un-mute is CTRL-ALT-M, and that doesn't look to be user definable. That's not a problem for Window-Eyes, though; CTRL-ALT-M isn't defined in any of our keyboard layouts.

Right clicking on the Flash Mute systray icon pops up a context menu with a few options, including the option to silence the whole browser, not just Flash.

Left clicking on the Flash Mute icon brings up a trackbar where you can adjust the volume. Everything appears accessible.

This is a pretty cool utility. As any screen reader user knows, opening up a page that instantly begins chattering over your existing speech is an aggravating experience, especially when there's no clear way how to get the sound shut off so that you can really hear what's going on.

Sighted people get caught by this annoyance as well. Flash movies that automatically start blaring out music when you're not expecting it (i.e. www.pepsi.com) can take years off your life, especially when you forget that your speakers are cranked up all the way.

Flash Mute offers a quick, one hot key solution to those situations.

Thanks for the great find, Aaron.