Location of custom mute/play audio buttons: Opinions requested

Hello, community. I've added custom buttons to pause/play the audio narration, and put them very near the top in the tab/reading order. The intention was to make them easier to get to then tabbing through the entire slide and controls at the bottom of the slide, but the downside is that the user will have to bypass them every time. 

We have a slide as the first slide in the deck that asks if the user wants to hear the narration or not, but I was thinking that a screen reader user might want to just easily control the narration, which will NOT happen with the play button so "far away" from the top of the slide.

The order is:

Title, play narration button, pause narration button, slide content, back to top button, next button, (rest of controls).

What are you doing in yours? Opinions, please and thank you!