WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Auto-refreshing advertisements

for

From: Hayman, Douglass
Date: Jan 19, 2024 9:10AM

Barry,

Good questions. My thoughts are that any be it advertisements or internal audio/video clips, these should be under the control of the web site visitor to pause or stop to meet the intent of the accessibility guidelines. Obviously, the advertisers want to be in our face over and over again.

The only thing I can imagine being legit in providing a web visitor with refreshed content that they don't control would be perhaps a tornado warning or a lockdown message about a shooter on the premises.

I'd looked into what overlays claimed to do to stop motion and one that I checked out seem to merely take a screenshot of the page and present the user with that static image. That would be fine if the user had no vision impairment. Or perhaps new versions would do quick and accurate optical character recognition and properly layout the structure, providing access to all of the content, free of moving images and unwanted sounds.

Looking just now at a local Seattle news site and a national news site, both load with a video player going. The sound is fortunately muted by default on both. But tabbing to go to the player is not within the first 20 or 30 tab clicks. Loading NVDA screen reader, one site has landmarks and lands on the video player, the other does not. Both fail due to having movement that one can't tab to and stop within what, 3? 5? Tab clicks?

A colleague who uses a screen reader full time commented on how some paywalled news sites work fine for him. The pop-up blocking a view of the article is no impediment for him. And perhaps the visually distracting ad that bugs the sighted user but is muted, is no problem for the screen reading user. But what about the person using a sip and puff switch to navigate a web site, or the speech recognition using person with a spinal cord injury?



Doug Hayman
IT Accessibility Coordinator
Information Technology
Olympic College
<EMAIL REMOVED>
(360) 475-7632



-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Hill, Barry (Accessibility Tester) via WebAIM-Forum
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2024 1:44 AM
To: Chase, DJ < <EMAIL REMOVED> >; <EMAIL REMOVED>
Cc: Hill, Barry (Accessibility Tester) < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] [EXTERNAL] Re: Auto-refreshing advertisements

CAUTION: This email came from a non-OC system or external source. Beware of phishing and social engineering!


I have another question on this topic. Regardless of whether or not the ad is accessible, should the screen reader user be notified of the ad updating every one minute via aria? My thinking is that if there is a mechanism to pause the advert refresh, then this might be sufficient to inform the SR user that they are refreshable adverts. However, if they miss that pause button...

As always, thanks in anticipation.

Cheers

Barry



Information in this email including any attachments may be privileged, confidential and is intended exclusively for the addressee. The views expressed may not be official policy, but the personal views of the originator. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender by return e-mail and delete it from your system. You should not reproduce, distribute, store, retransmit, use or disclose its contents to anyone. Please note we reserve the right to monitor all e-mail communication through our internal and external networks. SKY and the SKY marks are trademarks of Sky Limited and Sky International AG and are used under licence.

Sky UK Limited (Registration No. 2906991), Sky-In-Home Service Limited (Registration No. 2067075), Sky Subscribers Services Limited (Registration No. 2340150) and Sky CP Limited (Registration No. 9513259) are direct or indirect subsidiaries of Sky Limited (Registration No. 2247735). All of the companies mentioned in this paragraph are incorporated in England and Wales and share the same registered office at Grant Way, Isleworth, Middlesex TW7 5QD