So why can’t web pages have sound effects?

It was probably one of the first things you did when you first started playing with HTML, but background music, and funny sound effects when you clicked buttons, went the way of the spacer gif—web design matured, and web standards took over.

But—now that “the web is the desktop”, and online applications become increasingly harder to tell apart from their OS-bound counterparts—can anyone remind me again just what is the compelling reason for not using sound effects on the web?

Desktop apps have always used sound as part of their UI. Sounds communicate change, error, or demand attention. As I type, Twitterific whistles at me; Word complains if I try to jump past the end of the current line; and Adium alerts me to the comings and going of my online friends. And yet, on the web, where we dissect and discuss every tiny nuance of design’s ability for communication, sound is all but ignored. (The only exception I can think of is 37signals’ Campfire, which gently ‘bongs’ at you when there is an updated message to read.)

“It’s an accessibility thing!” is a tempting argument, and certainly, allowing people to control embedded media would be an important concession. But there is no outcry over the inherent inaccessibility (or in-anything-else-ness) of sound effects in desktop applications, so it seems a rather weak argument.

A better one might be that sound effects can be large files, and thus slow down a web page—but if effects are part of the UI, and likely to be triggered by click or mouseover events, then the .wav files can be post-loaded in the same way as any other media to be revealed through user action.

It seems to me that there is no reason at all not to use appropriate sound effects as part of a web application—and, in fact, it might be a benefit to users who are used to audible as well as visual feedback.