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Number of posts in this thread: 9 (In chronological order)

From: Karl Brown
Date: Wed, Dec 21 2016 4:22AM
Subject: Transitions causing motion sickness - WCAG failure and how to handle?
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Hi all,

A client is going through a rebranding exercise and as part of that wants
to use lots of animated transitions. The biggest once I've seen is a
right-to-left "swipe" which starts slow, speeds up (a lot) and slows right
down. The transitions will be used in videos and to switch between "states"
(showing/hiding content which itself slides in at a different rate to the
"block" it sits on).

While reviewing the document and checking the design agency are proposing I
started to feel symptoms of motion sickness. I'm not personally prone to
motion sickness so I'm assuming the animated transitions are likely to
cause issues for a much wider group of people.

Looking through the WCAG I can't see anything that talks about transitions,
motion sickness, or anything similar. The closest I can find is 2.3.1 but
that's about seizures and is closer to epilepsy than motion sickness.

Does anyone know of an interpretation that can cover transitions?

If not, how does the group suggest handling the situation? My concern for
the client is they lose customers because people don't want to visit a
website that makes them feel sick. I don't know enough about sensory
disorders to know whether to speed up/slow down/eliminate the transitions
(the latter won't go down well with the brand team at the client).

All the best,

--
Karl Brown
Twitter: @kbdevelops
Skype: kbdevelopment

Professional Certificate Web Accessibility Compliance (Distinction),
University of South Australia, 2015

From: Jonathan Cohn
Date: Wed, Dec 21 2016 6:07AM
Subject: Re: Transitions causing motion sickness - WCAG failure and how to handle?
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I have never seen any standards on this, but during the beta cycle of iPhone's IOS 8 or 9, Apple added in a reduce transitions or animations to their accessibility page. Also, on my Company's IntraNet adjacent to the Enable more accessible mode is a check box to turn off animations. I expect there is no universal way of disabling this based on browser or system preferences.

Best wishes,

Jonathan Cohn



> On Dec 21, 2016, at 6:22 AM, Karl Brown < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> A client is going through a rebranding exercise and as part of that wants
> to use lots of animated transitions. The biggest once I've seen is a
> right-to-left "swipe" which starts slow, speeds up (a lot) and slows right
> down. The transitions will be used in videos and to switch between "states"
> (showing/hiding content which itself slides in at a different rate to the
> "block" it sits on).
>
> While reviewing the document and checking the design agency are proposing I
> started to feel symptoms of motion sickness. I'm not personally prone to
> motion sickness so I'm assuming the animated transitions are likely to
> cause issues for a much wider group of people.
>
> Looking through the WCAG I can't see anything that talks about transitions,
> motion sickness, or anything similar. The closest I can find is 2.3.1 but
> that's about seizures and is closer to epilepsy than motion sickness.
>
> Does anyone know of an interpretation that can cover transitions?
>
> If not, how does the group suggest handling the situation? My concern for
> the client is they lose customers because people don't want to visit a
> website that makes them feel sick. I don't know enough about sensory
> disorders to know whether to speed up/slow down/eliminate the transitions
> (the latter won't go down well with the brand team at the client).
>
> All the best,
>
> --
> Karl Brown
> Twitter: @kbdevelops
> Skype: kbdevelopment
>
> Professional Certificate Web Accessibility Compliance (Distinction),
> University of South Australia, 2015
> > > >

From: JP Jamous
Date: Wed, Dec 21 2016 6:23AM
Subject: Re: Transitions causing motion sickness - WCAG failure and how to handle?
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I am not sure who is the audience of this site or app. That should be #1. Maybe the intended audience like that kind of stuff.

As far as universal design, this is bad UX for sure. My wife who is fully sighted and in her early thirties cannot see something like that. It would make her dizzy. As people age, their eyes would want to see simpler UIs because the nerves of the eye wear out and the brain functions slow. Those are typical symptoms of aging.

Your client needs to know this and the decision at the end is left to the client since the client pays the bill. If the client gets negatively impacted by this design because of stubbornness, then you would have done your job.

I faced this as a business owner that used to develop web sites. The first question I used to ask, Who is your primary audience? Do you know that something such as this feature may impact the amount of visitors to the site?

Some customers used to listen and take my recommendations, but others were hard headed and I have seen some that got hurt by that stubbornness.

From: Shadi Abou-Zahra
Date: Wed, Dec 21 2016 6:27AM
Subject: Re: Transitions causing motion sickness - WCAG failure and how to handle?
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If the animation lasts more than five seconds then 2.2.2 could apply:
- https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-time-limits-pause

Best,
Shadi


On 21-Dec-16 12:22, Karl Brown wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> A client is going through a rebranding exercise and as part of that wants
> to use lots of animated transitions. The biggest once I've seen is a
> right-to-left "swipe" which starts slow, speeds up (a lot) and slows right
> down. The transitions will be used in videos and to switch between "states"
> (showing/hiding content which itself slides in at a different rate to the
> "block" it sits on).
>
> While reviewing the document and checking the design agency are proposing I
> started to feel symptoms of motion sickness. I'm not personally prone to
> motion sickness so I'm assuming the animated transitions are likely to
> cause issues for a much wider group of people.
>
> Looking through the WCAG I can't see anything that talks about transitions,
> motion sickness, or anything similar. The closest I can find is 2.3.1 but
> that's about seizures and is closer to epilepsy than motion sickness.
>
> Does anyone know of an interpretation that can cover transitions?
>
> If not, how does the group suggest handling the situation? My concern for
> the client is they lose customers because people don't want to visit a
> website that makes them feel sick. I don't know enough about sensory
> disorders to know whether to speed up/slow down/eliminate the transitions
> (the latter won't go down well with the brand team at the client).
>
> All the best,
>

--
Shadi Abou-Zahra - http://www.w3.org/People/shadi/
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Wed, Dec 21 2016 6:30AM
Subject: Re: Transitions causing motion sickness - WCAG failure and how to handle?
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I think the best approach is to provide the client with information and let them decide how they want to proceed.

You could just tell them that you experienced motion sickness from the transition. Another option is to try out the transition on other people or propose they try it out on a wider potential audience before they start incorporating the transition into their design more widely. A last option I can think of is to do some research on visually induced motion sickness and perhaps something in that research is something you can explain to the client to give them more information.

I am totally blind myself so I have never experienced this. However, I do have family and friends who have complained in the past about visually induced motion sickness--typically after watching 3D films or playing video games. That makes me think that this kind of effect is likely significant enough that someone somewhere might have written about the causes. If you can find that, it might help you explain why the transition could cause motion sickness to other people as well--and possibly provide solutions for how to avoid that effect.

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Wed, Dec 21 2016 6:33AM
Subject: Re: Transitions causing motion sickness - WCAG failure and how to handle?
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Here are a couple of resources I noted on my TWitter feed:
REduced motion setting in WebKit
https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/442
Helpful twitter user:
https://twitter.com/nattarnoff/status/788154206867849216
I am curious myself to see how these are coming along.

On 12/21/16, Tim Harshbarger < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> I think the best approach is to provide the client with information and let
> them decide how they want to proceed.
>
> You could just tell them that you experienced motion sickness from the
> transition. Another option is to try out the transition on other people or
> propose they try it out on a wider potential audience before they start
> incorporating the transition into their design more widely. A last option I
> can think of is to do some research on visually induced motion sickness and
> perhaps something in that research is something you can explain to the
> client to give them more information.
>
> I am totally blind myself so I have never experienced this. However, I do
> have family and friends who have complained in the past about visually
> induced motion sickness--typically after watching 3D films or playing video
> games. That makes me think that this kind of effect is likely significant
> enough that someone somewhere might have written about the causes. If you
> can find that, it might help you explain why the transition could cause
> motion sickness to other people as well--and possibly provide solutions for
> how to avoid that effect.
>
>

From: November.Samnee
Date: Wed, Dec 21 2016 7:17AM
Subject: Re: Transitions causing motion sickness - WCAG failure and how to handle?
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I haven't seen this article shared yet, and I've found that it really resonates with designers.

http://alistapart.com/article/designing-safer-web-animation-for-motion-sensitivity

From: Karl Brown
Date: Thu, Dec 22 2016 3:21AM
Subject: Re: Transitions causing motion sickness - WCAG failure and how to handle?
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Thanks, everyone.

I'm going to sit with the designers and the brand team at the client and
make some recommendations, including a tool to switch off transitions and
animations (though this won't affect the YouTube videos they'll have).

I'm also going to start doing some deeper work on motion design to see what
guidance can be given more widely to minimise (hopefully eliminate) the
impact the transitions could have.

Thanks again :)

On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 2:17 PM, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
wrote:

> I haven't seen this article shared yet, and I've found that it really
> resonates with designers.
>
> http://alistapart.com/article/designing-safer-web-animation-
> for-motion-sensitivity
>
>
>
>

From: JP Jamous
Date: Thu, Dec 22 2016 6:43AM
Subject: Re: Transitions causing motion sickness - WCAG failure and how to handle?
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Karl,

I just remembered something that used to happen with me in the car when I was sighted. I could never read in a car for a long period of time. I would get motion sickness as well. Mind you that I can handle the rockiest boat on a lake or in the ocean without an issue. The only thing I know of that would give me motion sickness is being in a car and reading with my eyes, which I cannot do anymore.

I say that to second you on this one. I may if I could see get motion sickness from such a thing. What if I am in a car and I am looking at this site. Will the motion sickness double or cancel out? That would be something interesting to try. If you test it make sure someone else is driving or let us know so we can stay off the streets.