When should you use Motion stops when the reader asks?

Run this on pages with hero animations, carousels, looping video or animated illustrations. People with vestibular disorders can be made physically ill by motion, and everyone loses focus on the words when something keeps moving. Operating systems give readers a "reduce motion" switch; this checks the page listens to it.

It observes CSS animations, transitions, Web Animations and playing video. Motion drawn frame by frame from script, and the timing inside GIF images, are not visible to the page this way: GIFs are listed for review and script-driven motion is not decided.

carousels that keep sliding under reduced motion; looping background video; endless decorative animations

A failure names an element still moving after the reader asked for reduced motion, with how long it runs or that it repeats forever. Under WCAG 2.2.2 anything that starts by itself and moves for more than five seconds needs a way to stop it, and honouring the reduce-motion preference is the way most readers will ever use.

Five seconds is WCAG 2.2.2's line and is fixed. Start delays do not count toward it; only time spent moving does.

SchemaFirst.org publishes community-governed standards for digital QA. ArbiterQA is a supporter and commercial licensee of those standards; citation does not mean SchemaFirst operates ArbiterQA.