[HN Gopher] When animation is an accessibility problem
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When animation is an accessibility problem
Author : Tomte
Score : 46 points
Date : 2022-07-13 12:08 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Can I frame my aversion to pop-over windows as an accessibility
| problem? Can I sue the E.U. for cookie banners being an
| accessibility problem?
| _ph_ wrote:
| No, the EU is not mandating cookie banners. That is just the
| web industry trying to get around the laws prohibiting them to
| store random cookies, especially tracking ones, without
| consent.
| masswerk wrote:
| Thankfully, there's always a way to discard an offending node in
| the DOM, but really, why do I have to do this every time, I want
| to read an article? (I'm speaking of you, Ars Technica, but -
| sadly - not exclusively.)
|
| Rule of thumb: any permanent element should be also (visually)
| static.
| shabble wrote:
| I get very distracted by continuous animation on a page/app that
| I'm trying to interact with, to the point of just having to
| abandon meme-heavy articles or posts if every chunk of content is
| bookended by great flashy looping gifs or similar internet spew.
|
| Even technical or otherwise useful animated gifs showing the
| evolution of some system or progression through states or
| whatever, can be both helpful and absolutely obnoxious if it's
| autoloop forever with no control.
|
| SuperStop for firefox used to at least allow the halting of gif
| animation in a heavy-handed nuclear option sort of way, as does
| uBlock 'element zapper' tools, but if the content isn't
| immediately good enough to warrant those sorts of readability
| interventions, I'll probably just bounce.
|
| Electron and other native apps are even worse - good luck if you
| want a more nuanced control of your animation (including things
| like animated emoji/stickers/whathaveyou) than LOOP FOREVER or
| OFF.
|
| IMO, just another reason that things like chat services (Slack,
| say) that force you via TOS to _not_ make your client usage
| experience less uncomfortable are a blight on the modern
| computing ecosystem.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Hey web developers, do you know about the CSS "prefers reduced
| motion" media query that allows you to make your site/app more
| accessible to people like _shabble_?
|
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...
|
| https://caniuse.com/?search=prefers-reduced-motion
| janci wrote:
| The first thing I do on an Android phone is to disable
| animations. Unfortunately it makes some apps to do funny things
| (broken progressbars), and some animations will play anyway
| (opening apps from home screen)
| rado wrote:
| Web animations should be inside @media (prefers-
| reduced-motion: no-preference) { }
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Most of the time this is a good default approach. But sometimes
| animation can help to improve accessibility (e.g. when motion
| or a brief change in emphasis helps convey a state change that
| may be less noticeable without it). This is where _reduced_ is
| an important distinction. For cases where animation is helpful
| but the user prefers reduced motion, the animation's duration
| can be reduced and /or the animated property changes can be
| subtler.
| mrob wrote:
| Unfortunately, enabling the reduced motion preference leaves
| you vulnerable to fingerprinting even with Javascript disabled.
| See:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30237846
|
| And reduced motion is still motion. I prefer disabling all CSS
| animations (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32094641).
| toastal wrote:
| Though we still owe it to users to respect that preference if
| they have set it.
| [deleted]
| badtension wrote:
| We are a very diverse bunch - some people like endless emoji
| animations some hate them. How would we implement a web that
| works well for (almost) everyone? Something like an
| alt_videoframe=3 that is static when the user chooses so? What
| about fade-in / slide transition vs. instantly displaying hidden
| text after clicking "show more"?
|
| I feel like the whole accessibility discussion is not visible
| enough. So many websites presume specific display settings and
| perfect vision among its users. Even the initial caps in the
| linked article are overdone in my opinion - think about non-
| native English speakers and how they may be very confused by
| them.
|
| edit: a good example can be the newly rolled out Reddit feature:
| "Shop Avatars" - they added a constant animation on the top which
| is really annoying.
| causi wrote:
| People can't look beyond the specific use case they envision.
| For example, probably half the pages linked on HN are just
| godawful to use on a mobile browser in landscape mode.
| badtension wrote:
| That's a good point and highlights how important it is to
| make software widely accessible.
|
| Reminds me of device driver problems on Linux and the "works
| for me" mentality. When you take into account various types
| of devices, resolutions, operating systems, use cases,
| language barriers, user age, vision problems and disabilities
| the number of possible issues is staggering. I think a well
| engineered product should never be ignorant of them and cover
| as much as it can (as long as it's feasible).
| toxicFork wrote:
| Just like OS dark mode settings, have a toggle for animations
| too.
|
| Then let the developers and designers use the switch if they
| care.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Just like OS dark mode settings, have a toggle for
| animations too._
|
| Happily, this exists! My other response links to more detail
| on the CSS "prefers reduced motion" media query, including
| where to find this toggle on various OSs.
| drc500free wrote:
| Even the new static doodles that windows has added to the search
| box are too distracting for me.
|
| I have ADHD and I'm just trying to get my work done, and even my
| OS is trying to take advantage of me when I'm not at my best to
| maximize some attention-capture KPI.
| mrob wrote:
| At least CSS animation is optional. I have the following in
| chrome/userContent.css in my Firefox profile directory:
| @namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml); *,
| :before, :after { transition: none !important;
| animation-delay: 0ms !important; animation-duration: 0ms
| !important; }
|
| This also requires setting
| toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to true in
| about:config
|
| As far as I can tell this doesn't break anything important. I
| also have the same in chrome/userChrome.css (without the
| namespace header), which occasionally breaks the tab bar in what
| looks like a race condition bug, but it's still worth it IMO.
| mariusmg wrote:
| Kudos, i'm borrowing this one.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Animation is often cool: The first time I use it.
|
| After that, it becomes quite tiresome.
|
| I tend to use animations in my work, but only as half-second fade
| transitions, and whatnot. Makes the user experience smoother, and
| doesn't result in "twitchy screen fatigue."
|
| It's also not so simple to implement, by hand. Many frameworks
| have them embedded, so you get them for free, but I write native,
| so I often need to construct them, manually.
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