Re: guideline 7.1 about screen flickering (fwd)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Anne Pemberton" <apembert@erols.com>
> If
> animation on the screen is as distracting to mildly ADD folks, then I
would
> expect to see a sizeable number of my students who would be unable to use
> the computers in the lab. [...]
> If the animation in games and on the web were as distracting to ADD/ADHD
> kids as you suggest, the idea wouldn't have come up.

I think your reasoning here is specious. It is an _extremely_ common problem
among people (including a number without substantial ADD symptoms) to be
distracted by animation to the extent that they cannot access content. A
usability test conducted in '96-97 by User Interface Engineering even
documented people physically blocking flashing/moving portions of the screen
with their hands in order to attend to their tasks.

You are using your class of ADD kids (and the content they use) to make a
blanket assessment of all people with ADD which those of us on list who have
it are telling you is fallacious.

>          When I hit the stop button in IE, the animation stopped. The user
> has control.

That's not true in Netscape 6. Or with Flash movies, or the blink or marquee
elements (and I've seen both in the last week in _new_ ad campaigns designed
to draw attention from the user).

My opinion on this image is that it probably doesn't present a risk in terms
of photoepilepsy (though of course I'm no expert), but it would certainly
distract some people from nearby content. My solution to an image like the
one cited would be to loop it for no more than 2 or 3 seconds, since it's
not offering any more content on future iterations of the loop. This is
actually what sites like Yahoo require to keep banner ads from distracting
users unnecessarily.

-
m

Received on Thursday, 26 July 2001 11:51:05 UTC