2.2.2: Pause, Stop, Hide – (Level A)
High-Level Description
This success criterion ensures that users can pause, stop, or hide any moving, blinking, or auto-updating content. This helps prevent interruptions or distractions to users and allows them to focus and easily understand content they are interacting with.
Detailed Description
What this means:
- Automatically moving or updating content can be paused, stopped or hidden or does not play for longer than 5 seconds, such as stock tickers or animations.
- Content such as carousels need controls such as pause, previous and next, which are clearly labelled, to allow the user to pause and let them manually control the carousel.
- Blinking or flashing content does not play for longer than 5 seconds, such as advertisements or pop-ups.
Applies to:
- Automatically rotating carousels, and sliders
- Auto-refreshing content, pop-ups and notifications
- Stock tickers
- Animations
Indicators of Non-Compliance:
- No mechanisms to stop, pause or hide moving content.
- Automatically refreshing content that cannot be stopped.
- Content that blinks or is animated that cannot be paused and plays for longer than 5 seconds.
Real-World Examples
| Scenario | Non-Compliant | Compliant |
|---|---|---|
| Automatically moving Homepage Carousel | The carousel automatically rotates through slides with no method to stop or pause the carousel movement. | The carousel has clearly labelled controls to pause the carousel and allow the user to manually move through the carousel. |
| A pop-up advertisement | The advertisement appears that shows blinking content that lasts for more than 5 seconds. | The advertisement has a mechanism to stop blinking within 5 seconds. |
| An animation playing in the background on a webpage | The animation plays as the user navigates through information on a page, distracting the user from the information. | The animation has a clearly labelled pause button to freeze the animation. |
Disability Impact
| Disability Group | With moving content | Without moving content |
|---|---|---|
| Partially Blind | Content is difficult to follow and users can lose track of the content they are trying to interact with | Users can easily follow information and content at their own pace |
| Cognitive Disabilities | Can distract the user from the task they are looking to complete | Users can focus their attention on the task they want to complete |
| Blind Users | Screen readers struggle to read and focus on automatically updating/changing content | Users can use clearly labelled controls to make navigation of content easier to read |
Supporting Documentation
Remediation Strategies
1 - Include visible, clearly labelled controls
Add buttons for pausing or stopping content where necessary.
2 - Avoid auto-play without user initiation
Ensure content does not start automatically and waits for user interaction.
3 - Use ARIA live regions only when appropriate
Use aria-live attributes for content that needs to be announced to the user so that they are aware of elements that may appear on their screen.