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Why Motion on Websites and Digital Content Is a Problem

Meryl Evans describes how at times she feels dizzy and light headed, in symptoms she describes as vertigo. 70 percent of deaf and hard of hearing children with sensorineural hearing loss have a vestibular disorder, which is also expected to affect “more than 35% of US adults aged 40 and older at some point in their lives”.

This demographic, alongside people who experience migraines, epilepsy, and general motion sickness, are sensitive to motion. It can be brought on by animated gifs, or background videos and slide shows on websites.

Meryl suggests giving viewers control over motion. Taking Twitter as an example, their accessibility settings have options to reduce motion and turn off autoplay. “When an image with the Play button shows up on Twitter, it’s either a video or an animated GIF. Select the image and it plays. Select the image again and it stops.”

Meryl touches on the “reduce motion” accessibility setting in operating systems, which I covered in more detail in dai11y 12/12/2022.

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