Animations
Page contents
User controls
Blinking or scrolling objects tend to distract from the text content of the page. Worse still, when implemented poorly they can trigger headaches, nausea or even seizures for some people.
Make sure users can pause, stop or hide any animated item which scrolls, blinks or moves for at least five seconds
- Applies to obvious things like looping carousels, slideshows and news feeds, and to animated backgrounds and illustrations.
- Does not apply to items in a state of loading or preloading.
- People need to be able to pause and replay moving content.
- Animated GIFs can become pixelated and distorted with changes in screen size and are best avoided.
We all process content at different speeds, and for some people the item they were interested in may have disappeared too quickly.
Flashing content
Avoid anything that flashes more than three times in one second
This amount of flashing can cause problems for people with epilepsy or other physical reactions triggered by flashing.
Text alternatives
Animations essential for presenting content must be accompanied by static text alternatives
Text with still images can also help people who have cognitive difficulties processing animations.
Animations with sound as a crucial component to the content should have synchronised captions and/or a text transcript. See the section on audio and video content.