Offer a static view of moving text
SCR36 is a sufficient technique, and it takes a different route from every pause control near it. Rather than stopping the movement, it offers the same words somewhere they were never moving in the first place. A control renders the content as a static block, in place, and the user reads it at their own speed. Reading at your own speed is the point, and it is why this technique sits where it does rather than with the pause-and-resume family. The applicability is wider than most write-ups suggest. It covers any technology with text that moves, scrolls or blinks and can produce a static block instead, so a flashing alert bar is inside it as squarely as a ticker. This is the one technique in the family with no test procedure published against it, so there is nothing here to cite as a checking method. Ours is below.
How we find it in an audit
Reviewers look for the control first, then for whether it does what it claims. A View as list or Show all button that opens the same animation in a modal has changed the frame and not the problem. What we want to see is every item present at once, holding still, readable in any order, with a way back to the moving version for anyone who prefers it. Automated tools can find the animation. They cannot tell a static alternative from a slower one, so this is a reviewer sitting with the page and reading it.
How affected users experience it
A stock ribbon cycling forty symbols four at a time is unreadable for anyone who cannot take it in at the speed it was set to. Someone with low vision magnifies it and sees fewer symbols per pass. Someone with a cognitive or reading disability needs a second look at the one that just left. Both are stuck waiting for the loop to come round, and both know that when it does they will have the same few seconds to work with. A table of the same forty rows costs nothing. It ends the whole problem.
Passes vs. fails
Passes
<div class="ribbon"></div>
<button onclick="showAsTable()">View all 40 as a table</button>
<!-- The table replaces the ribbon in place. A second control brings the movement back. -->Fails
<div class="ribbon"><!-- 40 symbols cycle, 4 visible at a time --></div>
<!-- No way to see them all. Reading one quote means waiting for the loop. -->How this gets tested
The W3C publishes test rules that define what a checker looks for here.
- Meta element has no refresh delayA tool can check this
- Meta element has no refresh delay (no exception)A tool can check this
Other ways to satisfy this rule
11 guides on this site are filed under 2.2.1 Timing Adjustable. 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
- G133sufficientOffer longer session limits before forms begin
- G180sufficientLet users extend time limits tenfold
- G198sufficientLet users switch time limits off entirely
- SCR1sufficientLet users extend a script's time limit
- SCR16sufficientWarn users before a time limit runs out
This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique SCR36: Providing a mechanism to allow users to display moving, scrolling, or auto-updating text in a static window or area. 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.