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

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From: Jonathan Cohn
Date: Dec 21, 2016 6:07AM

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 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
> > > >