I followed a Software link about the latest updates to this article…
It included an animated gif.
Because most autoplaying animation can trigger migraines, and some can trigger seizures, please avoid autoplaying animation.
Because Firefox on Linux has a lot of problems detecting desktop settings to disable Effects, or responding to its own settings for ui.prefersReducedMotion and layout.frame_rate, please please avoid it.
I disagree with this. There is only a tiny gif and it’s the best way of showing the effect that the actual scroll button have.
Perhaps as a compromise we can agree to only “low” framerate animations? I’m not sure how easy that will be to enforce. But we’ll see.
I think something users can choose to play or not play would be better.
It’s best to include a video (webm should be playable by everybody). It can even have autoplay and looping enabled, it doesn’t matter, because that can be configured by the end user (e.g. in Firefox you can disable autoplay by default). It’s also much more bandwidth efficient than gif.
I think the original post was about the animation causing some people to get migraine headaches due to the animation triggering them. And, I do think the integration of user settings of the desktop are only loosely coupled to the Firefox browser.
I don’t understand your post, @jakfrost. I offered a solution to all issues mentioned.
I didn’t see a response to this statement from the OP. Sorry if I missed it.
Can’t you just disable auto-play of … basically anything in your browser or browser extension?
I believe it is right for you to have such option.
But I don’t think everybody should be forced to consume the content in a way that suits any minority.
As we do have an accessibility group we not should arguing that a minority hast to do necessary changes. I think to be professional and following good examples we should hear on such requests, and organize our habit to program websites so, that it includes a variety of groups of individuals. Independent of being major or minor.
I agree with this, at least using a format that will respect browser autoplay settings would be better.
People who get migraines and seizures from this are a minority as others in this thread mentioned, but that is no reason to ignore the safety of these individuals who have no choice to not be affected by it, and have to live their entire life being endangered by animations that have no (easy) way of being disabled, simply because there are less of them than those who are not affected by it.
Having a format that respects autoplay browser settings is better because people who aren’t affected by it notice no difference, and people who are affected by it can safely browse pages that include animations.
I do hope that the people in charge of this are not opposed to doing this small act of accessibility, now that it has been brought to attention.
I can use several hidden settings, each of which will block some animation. In Firefox, I can use image.animation_mode none to block animated gifs and animated pngs.
However,
Firefox does not pick up on enough of the desktop-level settings, such as disabling effects.
Firefox does not extrapolate from its own global settings, such as ui.prefersReducedMotion, to change the default values for each animation setting. 1864581 - On Linux, disabling desktop effects and/or setting prefers-reduced-motion should disable image animations by default.
Firefox preferences are not accessible with about:config tweaks such as reducing the frame rate.
Firefox cannot block a lot of common types of animations online, such as javascript-based animations, sidebars, hovering nav elements, backgrounds, etc., etc.
Not all apps disable smooth scrolling or other animations if users disable effects.
@marjae
I thought it wouldn’t be such a big technical issue. Thanks for explanation
And in the light of that the request makes sense.
@ilikelinux
Yes, that’s mostly what I said with
I believe it is right for you to have such option.
This sounds like a request to have against the web browser upstream, as asking every web-page owner to disable auto-play doesn’t sound like a viable long-term solution.
However reading @kparal reply again:
It’s best to include a video (webm should be playable by everybody). It can even have autoplay and looping enabled, it doesn’t matter, because that can be configured by the end user (e.g. in Firefox you can disable autoplay by default). It’s also much more bandwidth efficient than gif.
it looks that we actually have (partial) technical solution at hand.
@mschorm just quoted the appropriate paragraph above. Autoplay (for audio & video, but doesn’t apply to GIFs) can be configured in Firefox (not sure about other browsers) from its settings, just go to Privacy & Security → Permissions → Autoplay.
I use it myself to block audio and video autoplay by default on all websites, and it mostly works well, but some websites unfortunately override it by using javascript instead of standard html tags (of course we can use the standard tags and respect the default browser setting).
Ok then to get to the point what I disliked on your statement :
Consuming
It is not the question about consuming, the question is how we do produce the content. And yes we are a community who is including (see COC), we should on all platforms communicate the same way. That was my point.
suits any minority
it is not about quantity it is about quality. The accessibility group will take care of that in the future.
And not just for the Magazine.
@ekidney does the accessibility team/group have a tag in ask.fp.o ? I find to discuss this just in the magazine team is not the right place. If we do have a tag we can make such request straight in the ask section and including all the teams involved.
Well, as I said, sorry if I missed it, though to me it seems to be not an answer per se’ but a solution for the user in this instance.
I see it as a general solution. Publish the animation in a format which can be played or paused on will (i.e. not GIF), and decide whether autoplay should be enabled by default (assume that sensitive users have already disabled autoplay in their browser, because this is likely something they are familiar with), or disabled by default (require all users to click the play button, if they want to see it).