[zagrebian]

Not all animations are an issue. Disabling all animations would be too much. That’s why the website needs to decide for each animation if it should be affected by prefers-reduced-motion. The browser cannot make this decision¹.

1. Maybe in 100 years, when we have powerful AI that and reliably identify problematic animation.

[ben_w]

Counterpoint: iOS has this flag, Duolingo FAQ says this is the only way to turn off animations on iOS: https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360058189572-...

Unfortunately, Duolingo ignores this flag for many animations, and more than half of the screens are still animated.

I find the animations Duolingo uses to be obnoxious distractions, and I want them to be actually disabled when I tell it this. I also want this kind of thing to be switchable on a per-app level, so that I have a way to override the (I assume) opinion of the art department or the marketing person that thinks these animations are engaging or fun without having to also disable the non-obnoxious animations my other apps have.

(Mind you, at this point I'm thinking Duolingo has been a lost cause for the last few years; although the courses seem to still be improving, the UX has been getting worse faster).

[zimpenfish]

Speaking of iOS, Arc - whilst being a handy location/places tracker - has some of the worst UX I've ever seen. Doing almost anything involves swoops and fades and shifts - and this is with "Reduce Motion" turned on. If I suffered from motion sickness, I'd delete the app because it would knock me sideways every time.

(eg. to confirm an unconfirmed item, you tap on a coloured bar which then swoops a new pane from the right, shifts it up, zooms the map, and occasionally does a little blink refresh of the map. And you frequently get 4-5 of these a day, each one doing its little UI dance. God help you if you need to convert 10+ mis-identified transport segments to a single bus...)

[zagrebian]

Browsers could have a separate preference for disabling animations more strongly. But that would be different from the “reduce animations” accessibility preference. Those are two different preferences with different use-cases. You can’t merge them.

[wruza]

I have tried this iOS flag a few times, and every time it induced sickness instantly. It doesn’t reduce animations, it replaces them with nauseous fade in-out effect sometimes even in supported apps.

Turned it on to make phone/ui fast and instant, found out it just doesn’t. Idk what people with vision problems need, but personally I need animations (either fade or motion) to not exceed ~100ms.

[petee]

Developers can't make that decision either - given the ability to override animations will end up with all the things still animated because "we know best"

A better option is to respect the user, and if your site really can't run without animation, then just show an error stating that...Which shouldn't be a problem considering how many websites refuse to work just because you are using a chromium alternative that is realistically supported but just isnt Chrome itself.

[arcbyte]

All animations are an issue.

[zagrebian]

Everything can be an issue. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.