CSS prefers-reduced-motion Media Query

By  on  

When I started in the web development industry, media queries were limited -- screen and print were the two media queries I was most often using. More than a decade later, media queries have advanced to various screen units, feature checking, and even color scheme preference. I've been so happy to see CSS evolve beyond incredibly generic settings.

One of the CSS media queries I've recently discovered is prefers-reduced-motion, a media query for users sensitive to excessive motion.

Let's use prefers-reduced-motion to show motion to all users but none to sensitive users:

.animation {
  animation: vibrate 0.2s; 
}

@media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) {
  .animation {
    animation: none;
  }
}

The example above illustrates how we can cater to sensitive users by not animating elements for those who have said they don't want them.

It's amazing how media queries like this can really show users that you care. Sure, we love the fancy razzle-dazzle but not everyone can handle that motion.

Recent Features

  • By
    Introducing MooTools Templated

    One major problem with creating UI components with the MooTools JavaScript framework is that there isn't a great way of allowing customization of template and ease of node creation. As of today, there are two ways of creating: new Element Madness The first way to create UI-driven...

  • By
    Responsive Images: The Ultimate Guide

    Chances are that any Web designers using our Ghostlab browser testing app, which allows seamless testing across all devices simultaneously, will have worked with responsive design in some shape or form. And as today's websites and devices become ever more varied, a plethora of responsive images...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    CSS Custom Cursors

    Remember the Web 1.0 days where you had to customize your site in every way possible?  You abused the scrollbars in Internet Explorer, of course, but the most popular external service I can remember was CometCursor.  CometCursor let you create and use loads of custom cursors for...

  • By
    MooTools History Plugin

    One of the reasons I love AJAX technology so much is because it allows us to avoid unnecessary page loads.  Why download the header, footer, and other static data multiple times if that specific data never changes?  It's a waste of time, processing, and bandwidth.  Unfortunately...

Discussion

  1. Hey David!

    As someone that has suffered vestibular disorders before, prefers-reduced-motion is a godsend.

    A somewhat better, broader implementation is using the a really short animation-duration instead of animation: none, as it’s fairly common to implement animations in such a way that starts off screen or otherwise invisible, which could mean the elements don’t show up at all if using animation: none. Iteration count will prevent us from getting infinite loops.

    Same thing can be achieved for transitions.

    @media screen and
      (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce){
      * {
        animation-duration: 0.001ms !important;
        animation-iteration-count: 1 !important; 
        transition-duration: 0.001ms !important;
    
      }
    }
    

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!