You know since of the things you’re mentioning are considered more accessible, right? And that there’s data to back that up?
And no, it’s not out of sadism. That’s a horrible thing to say, and completely unfounded.
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How? I’ve mentioned flashing, animation, animation, and more animation…
Inconcievable!
Okay, I think a narrow position:fixed header could be accessible. But position:fixed sidebars are kinda painful. And position:sticky adds more animation beyond position:fixed.
P.S. And it’s not like anyone’s going to get an animated position:sticky header while trying to code a simpler position:fixed header. There are a lot of sites saying how to code these things, few discussing how to block them, though there are extensions to remove them after loading. Some people discuss ways to blink text now that they can’t rely on blink tags, or to make modals more powerful, or to detect and defeat ad-blockers. Some people code their css so that user css which defeats one animation triggers another animation.
When people go out of their way to do something which ends up hurting others… when accessibility and/or medical organizations who should know better use smooth scrolling or animated side-scrolling text… when people go out of their way to keep other people from protecting themselves… What am I supposed to think of it all?
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I’d never heard of those problems till you described them. Perhaps it just hasn’t been recognized widely, like color blindness or physical accessibility issues. I love animations as an art form (I made a clay animation movie in high school) and as a way of presenting information (I’ve made a lot of them to understand my own research data), but I had no idea it could actually cause pain to some people. I understand it now. Of course, on learning about it, it makes sense to me. Our wires can get crossed in all sorts of different ways.
How common are your issues—do you know? If it’s a rare problem that might explain why allowances for it aren’t being made. Actually I find advertising animations on line very annoying, but for me that’s only because they are distracting.
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I honestly don’t know.
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British studies suggest 1.1 new diagnoses of photosensitive epilepsy per 100,000 people per year. Since people can grow out of it, the diagnosed prevalence is probably on the order of 30 per 100,000 people. Since reflex seizures, such as strobe-induced seizures, were traditionally understood as generalized seizures with motor symptoms, there may be missed diagnosis of partial occipital lobe seizures.
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Pseudo-epilepsy, aka. psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, also occurs. Since it is often mis-diagnosed as true epilepsy, it’s unclear where this fits.
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Post-concussion syndrome can also cause similar symptoms.
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I’ve read that various eye diseases such as glaucoma can cause similar symptoms. Estimated prevalence about 1.9% of those 40 and older, perhaps 1,000 per 100,000 overall?
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Prevalence figures for visually induced motion sickness (vims) are all over the place, usually between 5% and 40%. I think it was a major issue with iOS 7…? but usually much milder than in my case.
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My own symptoms weren’t as bad until 2012-2014. My baseline symptoms aren’t uncommon among autistic people. At 2% autistic prevalence, with some being more sensitive and others less, that’s less than 1%, plus chronic illness, about 10% of the public, so maybe on the order of 100 per 100,000…?
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Thanks! That puts it in perspective.
I remember seeing a turn signal on a bus (school bus?) that had a fat arrow pointing the way it turned. (I think it flashed too.) But an arrow that didn’t flash would work on vehicles and be just as effective. The problem is the enormous inertia of the industry (not to mention people’s expectations) that it probably won’t ever change.
Computers though are flexible enough to take into account. Unfortunately I guess web developers aren’t.
I have a seizure disorder but it’s controlled and strobes never bothered me. I do have to get a doctor’s letter to renew my license. I’ve never heard of people with a DUI needing a letter to renew their license.
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Unfortunately, no it wouldn’t. The whole point of the flashing is to stimulate that part of your brain that’s really into movement. Remember in the original Jurassic Park the scientists told the kids to keep still so the T Rex wouldn’t register they were prey? That’s an actual thing, and humans have it too.
That’s why marquees have flashing lights, to make them attention-grabbing.
A just-on light doesn’t attract the attention of a flashing one, which is why drivers plough into the backs of stopped cars (happened to me, and just happened to a friend of mine last week). It’s why they’ve added the third brake light at the top of the rear window – still a steady light, but more noticeable because it changes the light pattern arrangement.
Car signals don’t generally set off seizures because they’re calibrated not to be at the frequencies most likely to set off seizures. Ditto for most other kinds of flashing lights, at least that weren’t wired up by hand outside a factory.
For all the work still left to do for accessibility, a lot has been done.
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Singapore: Laboratory of Digital Censorship
“The government wants to protect its privilege of controlling the narrative against the encroaching of social media, which is enabling democratization and allowing some voices to be heard that were earlier not being heard,” Thum Ping Tjin told me, on a short visit to London in June. “The law allows ministers to define the truth in the first and second instance and places barriers in front of people before they can reach adjudication in the courts.”
Besides his academic work, Thum edits a web-based magazine named New Naratif, which publishes long-form essays, reports, and comics about Southeast Asia. His short videos and podcasts on Singapore’s history are appealing to younger audiences and sometimes go viral. But Thum now fears that his own content may be targeted under the new law—whatever the government says about safeguarding free speech.
“This has been the People’s Action Party pattern—of creating extremely broad laws that allow them to arbitrarily define what’s right or wrong and say, ‘we will use it responsibly,’” Thum said. “Criminalize everything and then target people selectively: people who criticize the government or are political opponents. On paper, there are mechanisms to contest the law, but they are so difficult to activate and are designed such that the barriers of finance and time are enormous.”
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When LED turn signals first became popular I had to get used to the fact that their light curves (with time) were sharp square waves, instead of the rounded square waves of incandescent lights. That puts more (time-based) frequency content into the flashing. I wonder if those sharp light curves trigger sensitive people more.
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One of their suggestions:
Cover one eye and turn away from the source of flashing lights. Closing both eyes or turning your eyes in another direction will not help.
… I tried that a few times. I once regained awareness 2 lanes into the highway. [P.S. after turning away from one flashing light and encountering another] Fortunately, there was little traffic at the time.
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Yes, they don’t mention how quickly the light turns on and off. I’ll wager the research hasn’t been done. But they do say
Some people wonder whether flashing lights on the top of buses or emergency vehicles may trigger seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy too.
I’d say the answer is “yes.”
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Generally, flashing lights most likely to trigger seizures are between the frequency of 5 to 30 flashes per second (Hertz).
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Sounds like it can be outside that range.
Abstract:
Full paper:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1528-1167.2005.31405.x
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That’s probably why they said “generally”.
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When LED turn signals first became popular I had to get used to the fact that their light curves (with time) were sharp square waves, instead of the rounded square waves of incandescent lights. That puts more (time-based) frequency content into the flashing. I wonder if those sharp light curves trigger sensitive people more.
I know the square wave makes blinking slightly risky when noticing that someone’s brakes just came on. Third brake lights are often out.
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A quick lesson thread on framing, the implications of language that we don’t even think about, and the whitewashing of history through media (not explicitly mentioned, but think of your average “cowboy” movie and who it depicts):
Also:
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Gonna have to disagree with him on that.
There’s no way it’s just *four" languages.
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Maybe if you’re just counting language families?
I think you can probably encompass the vast majority of the English language as having originated from Romantic, Greek, Germanic, and Celtic families.
But yes, there’s probably at least four different Germanic and four different Romantic languages alone to account for within the trenchcoat.
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