January 7, 2021

Web Animation and Accessibility Reading List

The notion of learning in public has always scared me. I've never felt the desire to write about topics that I don't feel I'm particularly the best advocate for. But I think I might start leaning harder into it, as a way to be able to encourage myself to continue to grow.

A couple months ago I was involved in what seemed like a relatively minor car accident. The short story is that I needed to have my bumper replaced. The longer story is that after about a month I developed the symptoms of a whiplash injury and a mild TBI. Which felt super scary, and still does. But now that I'm healing and working on getting back to work, one of the things that I realized I wanted to do in my free time was finally compile a reading list of articles about accessibility and web animation.

I've had conversations as a design-focused web developer about the implications of suddenly shifting focus or scrolling the screen in web applications or in any website — and how it often makes more sense to never hijack either scrolling behavior or unexpectedly trigger scrolling based off of a user action (like clicking a button). I've wanted to help other people empathize.

I've also mentioned vestibular disorders to coworkers, but felt at a loss for how to explain it. I wanted to make a blog post that I could personally refer to learn more about it. But I kept putting it off, and then the car accident happened. And I discovered that there are often vision issues associated with TBI injuries (and concussions, which I was not diagnosed with due to not hitting my head).

So this is my first attempt at learning more extensively about web animation and accessibility in public, by making a running list of resources, and hopefully over time annotating them with things that I've learned after time and consideration. And to feel just a bit less of an imposter when I feel myself getting involved with an accessibility conversation but don't feel like I have more specific anecdotal information to share at my fingertips.

An Introduction to the Reduced Motion Media Query

Revisiting Prefers-reduced-motion, the Reduced Motion Media Query

Vestibular Issues in Parallax Design

Vestibular Disorders and UI Animation with Greg Tarnoff

Seizure and Vestibular Disorders

A Primer to Vestibular Disorders

Accessibility for Vestibular Disorders: How My Temporary Disability Changed My Perspective

WCAG Understanding Success Criterion 2.3.3: Animation from Interactions

Designing Safer Web Animation For Motion Sensitivity