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RE: blink and marquee elements

for

From: Michelle Wiss
Date: Mar 6, 2002 12:59PM

Plus, it's worthwhile to point out that a marquee-style scroll does produce
a "blinking" effect as the text scrolls.

Item J is, as I understand it, there to prevent pages from triggering
seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy. Since blinking text and
marquee text net the same result in many photosensitive epileptics, it's
advisable not to use either tag.

(Full disclosure: I am a photosensitive epileptic, so I know quite a bit
about this issue.)

Michelle


Michelle R. Wiss
Manager, UI & Documentation
Plateau Systems, Ltd.
<EMAIL REMOVED>
+1 (703) 292-0207


-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Spruill [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 5:02 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: blink and marquee elements


Derren,

While Blink and Marquee aren't mentioned specifically in Section 508 - Item
J of the Access Boards guidelines ("avoid causing the screen to blink at a
rate of ....") in my mind could/should prohibit the use of blink. A better
case is made in the w3c's WCAG guideline 7 - "Ensure that moving, blinking,
scrolling, or auto-updating objects or pages may be paused or stopped".
Hopefully that helps somewhat - I'm a Sect. 508 compliance
checker/remediater here at the National Library of Medicine, NIH and my
colleagues and I always rule out the use of Blink (not just because of
personal bias against it). Just my $.02

Kevin


Kevin Spruill
National Library of Medicine
OCCS
<EMAIL REMOVED>
(301) 402-9708
(301) 402-0367 (fax)
www.nlm.nih.gov


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