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Option to disable CSS animations / safe mode / "CSS Crimes Toggle"

Not to harsh anybody's css crimes, but it seems like for some users, the proliferation of high speed flashing/blinking/etc. text and graphics may present a meaningful accessibility problem. It would be nice if there was a way to disable css animations site-wide for those users or to give an option to toggle user CSS within posts with the ability to default to "off", similar to a content warning. 


Some users are already putting their CSS crimes behind CWs manually for this reason, but it would be nice to not need to rely on everyone to remember to do that


47 people like this idea

Commenting on this as it's closest to something I was thinking today, upon reading some points on site readability regarding animated images and the difficulty in that so many of them are externally hosted.


A single tickbox - a bit like the 18+ tickbox, with something like 'animation' or movement present, so that people could choose/toggle to have their pages naturally collapse those if they need to for accessibility/data reasons. it'd be easier than asking for a note on each image, and hopefully would be disseminated as part of considerate behaviours as it's super easy to do.


9 people like this

Honest to god yes please this. I have shit eyesight. It is so hard to read text with backgrounds and wiggling text and eye strain rainbow gradients and forced super-/subscript font sizes. It's come to the point where I don't even bother to read the post.


5 people like this

Yeah I would love this honestly. Not trying to kill anyone's fun but it would be nice to turn off or hide those types of posts. I've had certain ones slow down performance of the site or my browser in general on both my desktop computer and phone and I'd like to just be able to turn them off if that's a thing that is possible.

+1 to this request

strong +1; i disabled autoplay for videos and animations everywhere i possibly can.

also, i've heard there's a "reduce motion" attribute browsers can set that affects at least how some css crimes behave, but I don't have a convenient way to set this in my browser just for cohost. would be ideal if, e.g. the cohost user settings page let me set this for the site.

 reduce motion is an os feature, celestine! you can't enable it through your browser, i don't think 


and an opinion about a css crime toggle: if people don't cover their crimes with normal content warnings as it is, i don't think they'll be inclined to use this toggle. like, both of them are just a click away, and one of them already exists. ideally, everyone tags and covers their stuff correctly but this is so difficult to enforce. rather than a website feature, i think this needs to be a user culture change; but then again, difficult to make everyone abide by these "rules"

Can we get any kind of response from staff on this? It's great that a lot of people have been consistent with the #css crimes tag, but it's still an honor system that some don't bother with. Others won't tag "minor" things in their posts like dancing rainbow text or simulated chromatic aberration (this one in particular messes BADLY with my eyes, I already have trouble with color separation due to thick glasses). Regarding "reduce motion" settings, not only is it a partial solution, but users really shouldn't be expected to depend on a setting that changes the behavior of their entire OS just to fix a specific issue on one website.

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i like seeing css crimes but i don't like when they deplete my phone battery or animate by default.

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I'd like to add "performance and stability" to the list of reasons this is needed. The other day I happened across an untagged post with so much stylized and rearranged text crammed into a faux "image" that my phone's scrolling became a slideshow on the way past. CSS NEEDS to be opt-out if this is going to continue to be a problem at the cultural level too.

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another half a year of nothing on this makes me firmly believe that the userbase and devs both don't give a shit. so I'm done caring, too. what a waste of potential for a platform.

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Super late but bump, as fun as they are they can def be an accessibility/performance issue


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