The speaker shares a personal story about discovering a vestibular disorder, which causes dizziness and nausea from flickering lights and motion.
Web animations can cause physical sickness for a large percentage of the population with vestibular disorders, vision disabilities, autism, and epilepsy.
An example of an email overloaded with GIFs illustrates how motion can make content unusable, raising the question of whether animation is truly essential.
Examples from art history and a 3D Braille painting demonstrate that creativity is not dependent on animation and that accessibility can be delightful for everyone.
A review of Webby Award winners, like the Getty's Mesopotamia site, reveals that visually impressive, animation-heavy sites are often completely inaccessible to screen reader users.
Not all animation is bad; subtle, user-initiated micro-animations can enhance the user experience without causing harm if implemented accessibly.
Comparing two insurance websites shows how creativity can be expressed through thoughtful user flow, language, and illustration rather than just flashy visual effects.
To balance creativity and accessibility, ask if an animation meaningfully improves the experience and ensure it doesn't create barriers, following WCAG's "pause, stop, hide" principle.
Sensory-Minds GmbH
Offenbach am Main, Germany
56:01Dirk Ginader
23:05Mina Nabinger
31:30Ramona Domen
31:38Anuradha Kumari
27:16Tanja Ulianova
56:00Karl Groves
30:07Julia Undeutsch
55:32Hidde de Vries
Jobs that call for the skills explored in this talk.
Twine
Charing Cross, United Kingdom
Triumph Services
Richmond, United States of America
Synthesia Limited
Charing Cross, United Kingdom
The Ladders
