Playhead

The visual indicator on a video or audio timeline that shows the current playback position, typically a vertical line or triangle marker that moves in time with the media. Playheads are a core primitive of timeline-based media tools (video editors, DAWs, subtitle authoring systems) and are inherently inaccessible to screen reader users because their meaning comes from spatial position on a canvas. Accessible alternatives include announced timestamp positions, audio cues on scrub or jump, and hotkey-driven navigation by fixed seconds or scene boundaries.