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Moving, blinking, scrolling, or auto-updating content that starts automatically and lasts more than five seconds must provide the ability for the user to pause, stop, or hide it.
What you need to know
- You may be picking up on a theme here. The user should remain in control of a website’s content. Keep this in mind when you retrofit or build your website for accessibility.
- Unless the content is essential, auto-updating means content updates or disappears on a preset schedule. Examples of this include a stock ticker, sports scores
blinking advertisements, scrolling news updates, and Gifs. - Moving content can be extremely distracting so this success criterion severely limits it. WCAG allows for five seconds for automatic moving content to catch someone’s attention.
What you need to do
- Limit or eliminate any content that moves or updates automatically
- For any content that begins to move on its own, provide the ability to pause, stop, or hide it after five seconds.
- When in doubt, err towards making automatic content static with the ability to turn on refreshes or automatic updates.
Reference
Read the full explanation of success criterion 2.2.2 on W3.org.
Related Resource
Check out “User Controls” from CSUN’s Universal Design Center for more information about this success criterion.
