Home Advocacy Reduced Motion as a Developer Option is Useless

Reduced Motion as a Developer Option is Useless

by Shaylynn Hayes-Raymond
time lapse photography of road during nighttime

Reduced Motion settings, whether they are for browsers, or for Windows/Mac or phone systems are effectively useless. I am not even sure what motion that these settings are removing because for the most part hovers, blinking/flashing/spinning loading spinners, and cursor blinks are ever-present. At the end of the day, for persons with sensory disorders there is pretty much nothing that is stopped by the Reduced Motion setting that is actually useful for people who prefer a device that isn’t giving them nausea, headaches, and at worse a painful fight-flight reaction.

If you google “reduced motion” you find several reports of developers trying to circumvent the option and never work– which is even more disturbing than the current uselessness of Reduced Motion. For those with problems with sensory integration, autism, or misokinesia, we are in a dire need for a Reduced Motion setting that is actually “no motion”. There is absolutely no reason why developers cannot accommodate this, other than their belief that “things should look cool”.

 

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