[Fwd: WAI and seizure disorders]

Hello,

In light of this email, I propose a guideline along the lines of:

"Allow the user to supress rendering of blinking and flashing
images and applets."

This may be a subset of "control presentation", but it may
deserve to be its own guideline.

All comments welcome,

 - Ian


-- 
Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org) 
Tel/Fax: (212) 684-1814 
http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs

attached mail follows:

Dear Mr. Jacobs,

I have just read the WAI Accessibility Guidelines: Page Authoring  page
and I am very impressed.  I think you and the rest of your team have
done an excellent job.  However, you failed to address the issue of
people with seizure disorders.  Many people with seizure disorders are
adversely affected by rapidly flickering images.  Often I have come upon

animations, or even just blinking text, that immediately caused me to
have auras.  My seizure disorder is not severe so I have not had an
actual seizure because of these, but people who are more sensitive could

very easily have an episode.  Some of the culprits are:  fast changing
GIF and JavaScript animations, blinking text which covers a large area,
unstable marquees which "jump" slightly instead of moving smoothly
across the screen.  It seems to me that at the very least a warning
should be given and an option whether to download the offending
image/script.   I highly encourage you to look into the issue of strobe
effect and epilepsy.

Sincerely,
Mimi Cummins