Accessibility: Reducing Motion

1 min read
When making your site accessible, it is a good idea to reduce motion of the elements on your site. Moving elements can cause problems for visitors with cognitive issues (such as motion sickness, epilepsy and ADHD).

Avoid or Limit Autoplay

You can set video and music players to play automatically once the page is loaded. However, screen readers may find it hard to read the site because of the media, and the audio may override the speech of the screen reader. 

Avoid Parallax Scrolling

In parallax scrolling, the background and foreground move at different speeds. This effect is usually used in page backgrounds and strips, and may create accessibility issues, such as problems navigating the site using a keyboard or screen reader functionality. 

Reduce Motion Support

If you do decide to use autoplay on animations and videos etc. on your site, then your site visitors are able to disable it from their operating system should they wish. 

On Windows, this setting is called Show Animations, and on Mac, the setting is called Reduce Motion.
Next step:
Go back to the Accessibility Checklist to continue improving your site for accessibility.

Did this help?

|