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My War On Animation

Article on The Verge, as part of July’s Accessibility Week.

The author writes about their experiences navigating the web as someone who finds any animation a stimulatory overload. They acknowledge that there are documented standards for the ‘limits’ of animation on the web, such as keeping gifs to five seconds maximum. However, the documented standards don’t go far enough for the author, who finds it difficult to deal with any animations.

There’s a really succinct paragraph describing the workarounds that people resort to, and the negative knock-on effects that can have:

I can block anything ending in .gif, but it usually renders buttons nonoperative. I can load a site without styles, but usually, the result is not very enjoyable to use. I can block ads, but then it deprives the nice websites I like to read (and write for) of revenue.

They point out some technological implementations that work for all users:

There is, of course, a way to bridge this divide, and bizarrely, one of my allies is Twitter, which struck a decisive blow when it allowed users to freeze autoplay on all moving content, including GIFs. Users who love them can post them; users who don’t simply see a still frame. What’s good for reducing server load is also good for the case exceptions such as mine.

The article ends with a call to action for developers, to give users control to shape their own experience. Give people toggles to opt in and out of animations and other potential accessibility barriers.

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