Accessibility: Prefers Reduced Motion #5528
Description
Accessibility: Prefers Reduced Motion
Follow up from reader reported issue to capture the incident and brainstorm about next steps (async)
Incident summary
On 26 July 2022, we received a reader report stating that when they toggle the switch to disallow flashing elements (an accessibility feature for users with a wide range of needs), that they then are not able to see entire parts of the page – In this case, it was a documentary banner. The switch can be located here: https://www.theguardian.com/help/accessibility-help
The reader also reported annoyance with having to go elsewhere to disallow/state preference for reduced motion elsewhere on the website, with not enough sign-posting in place.
Specific issues
Both of these claims have been verified and reproduced. We therefore can summarise the accessibility problems as follows:
- Readers who have this accessibility need/preference and have not yet toggled the setting that allows them to disallow this kind of experience will have a jarring experience of the website. Then, when and if they do find this setting:
- Readers who have expressed this accessibility need are not getting the full set of Guardian digital offerings they should expect to receive. This is incongruous with our general approach to accessibility. It also seems that there aren’t any standards or best-practices in place to assist developers across the organisation for how to implement this preference.
Some ideas/brainstorming
- Set out best practices for interactive and visual developers and designers for implementing this preference, barring off the possibility of wholly preventing a feature from loading. We can more granularly remove or pause graphical or video elements if necessary, without losing entire parts of the page.
- Ensuring anything with motion in it or on it either has a pause button or a link to the setting to state their preference for reduced or no motion (or both of these options, where possible) – the precedent for this would be in how SR handles and allows for users to opt out of article counting
- Invert the logic, such that a user positively affirms they are okay with motion on the page - possibly with a similar CTA/gateway a user has to use to load embeds from third party sites like TikTok