How Animation Aids Accessibility In Design

Sshekhar Jha
May 31, 2022

Animation is used in digital products in many ways. It helps draw the user's focus to a particular area on the screen, provides a fresh layer to the brand’s style with unique, enabling motion design, and adds a spark of unexpected fun to otherwise robotic interactions. But designing animation that surprises, delights, and is accessible, is trickier than it sounds. 

Animation brings with it a lot of visual and cognitive imagination. You must always take into account that how the users view the design on their desktop screen center is different from how they view it on their handheld devices. Any animation should be responsive to avoid overwhelming or distracting the users from anything that is essential. Users with cognitive, and learning disabilities should also be able to appreciate it. Motion designs that cause dizziness, nausea, disorientation, migraines, and seizures are considered inaccessible. Therefore, it is critical to design the animation with the proper aesthetics while keeping accessibility in mind.

Why is Good Animation Important?

Web animation can indeed be accessible. With just a bit of extra effort you can ensure that your animation has a positive impact on accessibility. This could include strategizing and planning how the animation contributes to ease of usage on the technical front and how responsive the audience is to the animation design. Responsiveness can be determined by the levels of interaction, engagement, and communication between the audience and the design.

When it comes to great UI/UX design, animation can be multi-purpose. It can showcase or infer functionality, improve engagement, make your website entertaining, and provide assurance and meaning to the interactions. Animation unlocks new models for exchange and branding.

Thanks to touch screen technology, operating applications have evolved from clicking button-down static lists to pinching, tapping, dragging, and wiping away through the programs. When paired with modern animation, these powerful new ways to interact with the system are exciting and often reveal unexplored opportunities for any business hoping to engage better with the customers.

What are Some Ways in Which Animation Aids in Design Accessibility?

  • Guided Tutorials

 A lot of times, software developers think users will engage with your website simply by looking at the interface. However, that is far from the case. For instance, when Google Chrome was first launched, it was outed by the three-dotted button, which left many people confused. 

Since then, major companies ensure that the most significant changes that are made to any new product should come with an animated introductory tutorial that allows the users to grasp the basics. This approach is logical because if users do not know how to use your application then the functionality features you have worked on will be useless.

  •  Micro-interactions

Reputable applications are also highly focussed on micro-interactions for a fantastic experience. Including animations in tiny interactive moments, you can create an illusion of direct control of physical objects; for instance, it is easier to distinguish between reading a recipe and making it. Think of the satisfaction when you swipe down on an app, and the entire interface follows a finger before the refresh V3 springs, and your site is updated. You feel as though you did it.

  • Enhanced Navigation

In the past, it was easier to get lost in all the options of the feature-packed program, but thanks to UI animation, it is no longer an excuse for developing the welding applications. Developers may hide most of the website's buttons from view. By thoughtfully binding them to a mouse-over action, moving one's cursor over to the tool's button would quickly distinguish this active element from others. Using shimmering colors, shift, and opacity levels enable you to direct users' attention to the page is an essential feature and eliminates the unnecessary sense of information overload. 

  • Streamlined Communication

One of the most important aspects of a new background application is the ability to convey messages properly. Perhaps the most ubiquitous example of animation employed in this manner is seen on the progress pass. Although showing the percentage of the nonworking tasks will serve to get the job done quickly, displaying progress is readily embraced by most software developers. It is the perfect way to offer a quick and accurate understanding of the task's state. 

This concept is based on real-life interactions. Consider this; a great way to start a good conversation is by taking a cue from the other side and following their means of communication. For example, shaking one's head means no in nearly every country; shaking entered characters is an exciting approach to releasing the message that a password is incorrect. Instead of taking the users two separate pages or making them read additional texts, simple shaking animation will quickly get to the point.

Engaging with the customers should not be taken lightly, and unfortunately, too many companies either go overboard with it or completely do away with animation. In reality, a delicate balance is needed. The best way to achieve it is always to have a purpose to your animation. When an animation is created simply for beautification, it may seem to have no reason to back up its existence. It will stick out to end-users like a sore thumb to get the opposite reaction of what you might’ve intended. Every aspect of the software solution is created through careful thought and consideration, so take the time to take a step back, deliberate, and craft the best possible animation designs. 

At EnterPi, we help you design the best animation for your application. You can visit our website or mail us for further information.

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