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Allow disabling of motion or animation

accessibilityfordevelopers.com

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Re: Allow disabling of motion or animation

#31

Post by InCityDreams »

makeitdouble wrote: post #13
greenbit wrote: post #2

Why does even the thought of 'disabling' animations have to be cast in the context of an accessibility issue? What about those of us that see no need of user interface elements that flollop about doing some kind of 'me Me ME!' dance, when we just want to get things done? I get it, if you're building a webpage maybe that's your artistic vision, and I'm specifically railing on OS animations, but the question still stan…

> that's your artistic vision > “look at my mad skills” I’m torn about this: there are enough unneeded and horrible animations that I completely understand this point of view of wanted to get rid of all of them. I also see that as throwing the baby with the bath water. There’s also fundamentally useful and informative animations to tell you something changed, what you’re supposed to do with an element or even what ty…

>when I got my new phone a few weeks ago

Which phone? I'd like to know what not to purchase.

Re: Allow disabling of motion or animation

#32

Post by zagrebian »

ben_w wrote: post #29
zagrebian wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all animations are an issue. Disabling all animations would be too much. That’s why the website needs to decide for each animation if it should be affected by prefers-reduced-motion. The browser cannot make this decision¹. 1. Maybe in 100 years, when we have powerful AI that and reliably identify problematic animation.

Counterpoint: iOS has this flag, Duolingo FAQ says this is the only way to turn off animations on iOS: https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360058189572-... Unfortunately, Duolingo ignores this flag for many animations, and more than half of the screens are still animated. I find the animations Duolingo uses to be obnoxious distractions, and I want them to be actually disabled when I tell it this. I also wa…

Browsers could have a separate preference for disabling animations more strongly. But that would be different from the “reduce animations” accessibility preference. Those are two different preferences with different use-cases. You can’t merge them.

Re: Allow disabling of motion or animation

#33

Post by zagrebian »

arcbyte wrote: post #27
zagrebian wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all animations are an issue. Disabling all animations would be too much. That’s why the website needs to decide for each animation if it should be affected by prefers-reduced-motion. The browser cannot make this decision¹. 1. Maybe in 100 years, when we have powerful AI that and reliably identify problematic animation.

All animations are an issue.

Everything can be an issue. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.

Re: Allow disabling of motion or animation

#34

Post by xigoi »

kaba0 wrote: post #20
greenbit wrote: post #2

Why does even the thought of 'disabling' animations have to be cast in the context of an accessibility issue? What about those of us that see no need of user interface elements that flollop about doing some kind of 'me Me ME!' dance, when we just want to get things done? I get it, if you're building a webpage maybe that's your artistic vision, and I'm specifically railing on OS animations, but the question still stan…

Well, the real world also “animates” everything, you can’t open your fridge instantly, nor can you grab your phone out of your pocket, nor are driving a car has any “instant” motions/happenings. These in-between states gives us well-needed information and are not artistic at all. Sure, they can be emulated badly, but for example iphone’s app switcher is imo a very natural implementation of how it should be done. Won’…

If you could teleport anywhere you want, would you still drive your car instead?

Re: Allow disabling of motion or animation

#35

Post by mr-wendel »

greenbit wrote: post #2

Why does even the thought of 'disabling' animations have to be cast in the context of an accessibility issue? What about those of us that see no need of user interface elements that flollop about doing some kind of 'me Me ME!' dance, when we just want to get things done? I get it, if you're building a webpage maybe that's your artistic vision, and I'm specifically railing on OS animations, but the question still stan…

I didn't realize "@media (prefers-reduced-motion)" existed, so I appreciate learning that.

I agree with counter points showing how animation can add useful context, particularly in response to user interactions. This fails to address the crux of the issue greenbit brings up: the 'me Me ME!' dance. Yes, there are some places animation is indispensable, but the problem is that 95% of them (and their ilk) are giving the other 5% a bad name. The best way to enjoy and maintain focus is to not have to be constantly on-guard for hijack attempts.

Add in the fact that so many things exhibit this behavior (animations just tend to be the worst), multiply by how many sites/apps you spend time with. Even major, paid products can be problematic. With the web, ads, newsletter/don't-go/"privacy"/etc pop-ups are bad enough already.

I think we can take things a step/leap further: icon/logo/front-page take-overs and how aggressively those are pushed in front of user eyeballs. I believe (citation wanted!) that publishing control over the Google doodles is subject to a very strict approval process to curate a very specific, subtle "experience". It has to be the most valuable space of virtual real estate in the world, even despite limitations. It's certainly the most obnoxious to me.

So if there is to be general agreement on how things improve, I'd rather it be based on something broader than accessibility, but if accessibility wins some ground I'd appreciate it nonetheless.

Re: Allow disabling of motion or animation

#36

Post by xigoi »

rikroots wrote: post #5
greenbit wrote: post #2

Why does even the thought of 'disabling' animations have to be cast in the context of an accessibility issue? What about those of us that see no need of user interface elements that flollop about doing some kind of 'me Me ME!' dance, when we just want to get things done? I get it, if you're building a webpage maybe that's your artistic vision, and I'm specifically railing on OS animations, but the question still stan…

I agree - prefers-reduced-motion is a user-controlled OS-level setting (like prefers-color-scheme) which apps and websites should do their best to respect. Sadly we live in a world where developer time is a cost, and the cost of respecting user preferences is way down the list of things to spend cash/time on ... unless, of course, an A/B test showing that common courtesy leads to better conversions gets deployed and…

If you're so tight on time that you can't add a simple wrapper to your CSS rule, why bother with adding animations at all?

Re: Allow disabling of motion or animation

#37

Post by lapcat »

kaba0 wrote: post #20
greenbit wrote: post #2

Why does even the thought of 'disabling' animations have to be cast in the context of an accessibility issue? What about those of us that see no need of user interface elements that flollop about doing some kind of 'me Me ME!' dance, when we just want to get things done? I get it, if you're building a webpage maybe that's your artistic vision, and I'm specifically railing on OS animations, but the question still stan…

Well, the real world also “animates” everything, you can’t open your fridge instantly, nor can you grab your phone out of your pocket, nor are driving a car has any “instant” motions/happenings. These in-between states gives us well-needed information and are not artistic at all. Sure, they can be emulated badly, but for example iphone’s app switcher is imo a very natural implementation of how it should be done. Won’…

The whole point of computers and technology is to do things faster than we previously could.

"Instant" is a feature, not a bug.

Re: Allow disabling of motion or animation

#38

Post by Roark66 »

greenbit wrote: post #2

Why does even the thought of 'disabling' animations have to be cast in the context of an accessibility issue? What about those of us that see no need of user interface elements that flollop about doing some kind of 'me Me ME!' dance, when we just want to get things done? I get it, if you're building a webpage maybe that's your artistic vision, and I'm specifically railing on OS animations, but the question still stan…

Exactly, I've recently been trying a new version of gnome and I was really surprised how snappy and quick it felt with all animations disabled (it was running on a fast pc too). I much prefer them off ever since.

Re: Allow disabling of motion or animation

#39

Post by lapcat »

wakeupcall wrote: post #30
mrob wrote: post #16

From my chrome/userContent.css in my Firefox profile directory: @namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml); *, :before, :after { transition: none !important; animation-delay: 0ms !important; animation-duration: 0ms !important; } toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets must be set to true in about:config for this to work. This gives me the best "reduced motion" of all (zero motion), with no effort requir…

Unfortunately it does break a surprising number of websites that just looove animations and in very annoying ways. I was using https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/no-transition... which operates on the same principle. You can try yourself it breaks the google login form. You don't need an account to try: just "login", enter a random address, and watch the password prompt not being enabled as it waits for t…

> I was using https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/no-transition... which operates on the same principle.

This extension doesn't seem to be available anymore.

Re: Allow disabling of motion or animation

#40

Post by matanshavit »

greenbit wrote: post #2

Why does even the thought of 'disabling' animations have to be cast in the context of an accessibility issue? What about those of us that see no need of user interface elements that flollop about doing some kind of 'me Me ME!' dance, when we just want to get things done? I get it, if you're building a webpage maybe that's your artistic vision, and I'm specifically railing on OS animations, but the question still stan…

I'm not an expert, but I wonder if animations could have a detrimental effect on people with certain kind of epilepsy.
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