Stop any blinking within five seconds
Blink to catch the eye, then stop. G11 is the route where the blinking simply ends by itself inside five seconds, and W3C counts it as sufficient on its own for the pause, stop, hide rule at Level A. That makes it the cheapest of the options, because nothing has to be built. No control, no setting, no state to keep track of. The other routes to the same rule ask for a way to stop the blinking, and they exist for content that has to keep going. If yours does not have to keep going, this is less work and a better result. Note where the boundary falls, though. G11 is about duration and nothing else. It says nothing about giving readers a stop control, which is a separate route to the same rule.
How we find it in an audit
A stopwatch settles it. Anything that blinks gets timed from the moment it starts, so the answer comes back as a number rather than an impression. Stylesheets and scripts get swept for the two shapes that produce endless blinking, which are animation counts set to infinite and interval timers toggling visibility. Where blinking runs past five seconds, the finding covers both routes, since either shortening it or adding a control will close it.
How affected users experience it
Blinking is built to pull attention, and for readers with attention disorders or certain learning disabilities it pulls attention whether or not they can spare any. A sale badge flashing beside a paragraph means reading that paragraph in pieces, four times over. Low-vision readers get an extra dose, because a blinking element inside a magnified view fills far more of what they can see. Five seconds is short enough to be a signal. Forever is a tax.
Passes vs. fails
Passes
The badge blinks for three cycles, about two seconds, then holds steady.
Fails
A SALE badge blinks without stopping, right beside the product description everyone is trying to read.
How this gets tested
The W3C publishes test rules that define what a checker looks for here.
- Text content that changes automatically can be paused, stopped or hiddenSomeone has to look
Other ways to satisfy this rule
11 guides on this site are filed under 2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide. W3C lists this one as sufficient for that rule on its own. Implement it correctly, in a way your readers' software actually supports, and the rule is met.
- G4sufficientLet users pause moving content and resume it
- G152sufficientStop animated GIFs blinking within five seconds
- G186sufficientAdd a stop control for moving content
- G191sufficientOffer a blink-free reload of the page
- SCR22sufficientStop scripted blinking within five seconds
- SCR33sufficientGive scrolling content a pause and a resume
This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique G11: Creating content that blinks for less than 5 seconds. W3C publishes its techniques as guidance rather than as the standard, and says so on every one of them. The success criterion is what conformance is measured against, and a technique is one documented way to meet it.