WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

How to develop for web with flashing/seizure guidelines in mind?

for

From: Kian Badie
Date: Feb 1, 2022 12:08PM

I have recently had this topic weighing on my mind and have found it
challenging to develop with it in mind. I was hoping to get some
perspective from other members in the community.

I have a problematic video player on a publicly available site I have been
working on that has me concerned on how it could violate the guidelines
related to flashing/seizures (SC 2.3.1). For a while the player had a video
scrubbing feature that I created and made available on the site, but it had
a bug where it would save/display the incorrect video frames at times. I
removed that feature recently because I felt like it would be considered
flashing as completely different and incorrect frames could be rapidly
displayed as the user scrubs the video.

Most recently I also have been worried that the video quality switching
feature that switches video sources might violate this guideline. At worst,
with my current implementation of the player, it appears like quality
switching could result in a rapid transition between the current frame of
the video, a blank frame as the video is loading, the thumbnail of the
video, the first frame of the video, and then back to the frame at the time
the video source was initially switched. It seems that different operating
systems seem to treat video source switching differently, so this behavior
is what I am assuming as a worst case scenario. This has me worried that
the flashing SC 2.3.1 guideline could already be violated since
different/unrelated frames can be displayed in quick succession. I have
also been worried if my bad code/implementation of the player could result
in a bug where the quality switching could break and cause any more
flashing to happen (if the quality switching was caught in an endless loop
somehow for example). I also fear that there are just different ways the
quality switching feature could flash that I have not found out yet since
my implementation/code behind the player is bad. I have since revamped the
implementation/code to be more predictable during this process, however it
is not live on the site.

I was really curious how other people in this field would approach
situations like these and how one would develop with flashing/seizures in
mind. I am new to the field and unsure if I am approaching and assessing
these situations correctly and I find it challenging to develop further
without worrying about this topic. Moving forward, I am still worried if
something else about the video player could break and cause flashing. I
wonder if others would also deem these situations as violations/risks and
if others develop with this topic in mind as much as I have been. Any
feedback or perspective is much appreciated.

Thank you,
Kian Badie