Pause, Stop, Hide
What this means
Some content moves, blinks, scrolls, or updates on its own: a carousel, a ticking news ticker, an auto-refreshing stock price. If that content runs longer than five seconds and sits alongside other content, the user needs a way to pause, stop, or hide it. This control matters because moving content competes for attention next to text someone is trying to read. That competition makes the text much harder to focus on and process. The one exception is when the movement or update is essential to what the content actually is, like a video player showing a video.
Who it affects
People with attention-related or cognitive disabilities can find it very hard to read or concentrate on static content while something nearby is moving, flashing, or refreshing. People with low vision using screen magnification may lose track of moving content, since they only see a portion of the screen at a time. Screen reader users can be interrupted mid-sentence too. This happens when an auto-updating region announces new content over what they're already listening to.
Code example
Bad
<!-- Auto-advancing carousel with no pause control, running indefinitely -->
<div class="carousel" data-autoplay="true" data-interval="3000">
<div class="slide">Slide 1</div>
<div class="slide">Slide 2</div>
<div class="slide">Slide 3</div>
</div>Good
<!-- Auto-advancing carousel with a visible pause control -->
<div class="carousel" data-autoplay="true" data-interval="3000">
<button type="button" class="carousel-pause" aria-pressed="false">
Pause slideshow
</button>
<div class="slide">Slide 1</div>
<div class="slide">Slide 2</div>
<div class="slide">Slide 3</div>
</div>How to test it
Look for anything on the page that moves, blinks, scrolls, or updates on its own, without you interacting with it: carousels, marquees, auto-playing video previews, live-updating tickers or feeds. Time how long it runs. If it continues for more than five seconds and sits next to other content, check for a visible, keyboard-reachable control to pause, stop, or hide it. If no such control exists, and the movement isn't essential to the content itself, this fails.