Gap in WCAG: Toast Notifications That Dismiss on Scroll or Focus Change

[goodwitch]

WCAG 2.x does not adequately address accessibility failures caused by toast notifications that dismiss when users scroll or move focus. This pattern creates a significant barrier for users with low vision, screen reader users, and keyboard users, yet is not clearly covered by existing Success Criteria. As a result, this harmful pattern persists in production systems despite causing real usability and accessibility failures.

This issue documents the gap and proposes consideration for WCAG 3 outcomes that better reflect user experience realities.

Description of the Accessibility Problem

Some toast notifications provide important and unique system feedback. In many implementations, these toasts dismiss automatically when the user scrolls the page or when keyboard focus changes. (I'm not talking about toasts that disappear after a specific time, like 5 seconds, because that will be reviewed under 2.2.1 Timing Adjustable)

This behavior creates an accessibility barrier because users must often scroll or move focus in order to read or understand the toast.

Affected users include:

• Low-vision users, who scroll to magnify different portions of the screen
• Screen reader users, who move focus to navigate content or review context
• Keyboard-only users, who naturally change focus during interaction

When an important toast disappears during these essential actions, the user may never receive the feedback the toast was meant to convey.

Why WCAG 2.x Does Not Adequately Cover This
Relevant Success Criterion: WCAG 2.2.1 – Timing Adjustable (Level A)

While this criterion addresses content that disappears after a time limit, it does not clearly apply when dismissal is triggered by:

• scrolling
• focus movement
• tab navigation

In these cases:

• There may be no explicit time limit
• The dismissal is tied to required navigation actions
• The user has no reasonable way to pause, extend, or recover the content

As a result, these implementations often pass WCAG conformance reviews while still producing inaccessible user experiences.

Why This Is a Meaningful Accessibility Gap

This pattern:

• Removes critical feedback before users can perceive or understand it
• Penalizes users for necessary accessibility behaviors (scrolling, focus movement)
• Is especially harmful for magnification and screen reader workflows
• Undermines user confidence and task completion

While not a WCAG 2.x failure, it violates the intent of accessible design and results in real-world exclusion.

Recommendation for WCAG 3 Consideration

WCAG 3 offers an opportunity to address this gap by:

• Explicitly considering focus- and scroll-triggered dismissal as equivalent to timing-based loss
• Evaluating user ability to perceive, understand, and recover system feedback
• Treating valuable system feedback as essential content, not purely transient UI

A potential WCAG 3 outcome could focus on ensuring that critical user feedback remains available until the user has a reasonable opportunity to perceive and understand it, regardless of navigation method.

[detlevhfischer]

Seems to me the keyboard focus part of this could be filed under 3.2.1 On Focus. But when this happens on scrolling, it doesn't seem to fit anywhere in WCAG 2.X.

[scurker]

I want to add a related example that reinforces that this is not a toast specific issue, but a broader problem with interstitial and transient UI patterns.

I have encountered the same accessibility concern with tooltips that are automatically dismissed when the user scrolls. This behavior is sometimes implemented for technical or performance reasons, such as expensive repositioning logic during scroll. However, regardless of the implementation motivation, the user impact is the same.

The same concerns with low vision users needing to magnify or scrolling to view adjacent content patterns could trigger a similar scenario where the tooltip content is hidden upon scroll even if the user has active focus on a trigger that is currently focused.

This highlights that the core problem may not just be limited to toasts, but could apply to a broader class of interstitial interfaces such as tooltips, popovers, banners, and other transient overlays. In all of these cases, it would be valuable to have clearer guidance that critical feedback and contextual information should remain available until the user has had a reasonable opportunity to perceive and understand it even if other navigation methods have occurred.