Moving text and flashing screens
Access barriers
Guidelines for overcoming access barriers
Activity
Moving text or flashing screens are used to highlight information or attract attention.
Access barriers
- Users with a vision impairment or people who read slowly have difficulty reading moving text.
- Some users may be distracted by movement in text or images or a flashing screen. This may include users with a psychiatric disability.
- Users with a physical disability may have difficulty moving quickly or accurately enough to interact with moving objects.
- Moving text and flashing screens can trigger seizures in people who experience photosensitive epilepsy.
- Screen readers may not be able to read moving text.
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Guidelines for overcoming access barriers
Enable users to pause or stop text which is moving, blinking, scrolling or auto-updating. If this is not possible, avoid using such text. Also enable users to control flickering screens.
Here are some ways to enable users to pause or stop moving text or flickering screens:
- Use style sheets with scripting to create movement as this allows users to turn off or override the effect more easily. TEXT EXAMPLE 1
- In HTML, don't cause pages to auto-refresh with 'HTTP-EQUIV=refresh' until user agents allow users to turn off the feature. TEXT EXAMPLE 2
- Configure servers to perform auto-redirects instead of using mark-up to redirect pages automatically. TEXT EXAMPLE 3
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Activity
If moving text is part of your website, use the checklist to assess any accessibility barriers that may be present. If you have ticked 'no' for any item, go back to the Guidelines for how to overcome this barrier.
Using moving text
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Style sheets with scripting to create movement have been used to allow users to turn off or override the effect easily.
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Pages are not designed to auto-refresh with 'HTTP-EQUIV=refresh'.
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Servers are configured to perform auto-redirects. Mark-up is not used to redirect pages automatically.
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