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Transitions causing motion sickness - WCAG failure and how to handle?

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From: Karl Brown
Date: Dec 21, 2016 4:22AM

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