With my recent griping about Apple and reduce motion, I should note many other companies/designers fail this test. The web remains rife with such issues, as does the app and gaming ecosystem.

In part, I can understand why. Vestibular issues are weird. I never used to have one, and now I do. I’ve no idea where it came from. It also makes little logical sense to people. They think I’m lying that I get triggered by animations because I also write about videogames. But here’s the thing: I’m fine with racing games, just as I’m fine with roller-coasters. Whatever’s going on in my head manifests when 1) too much of my focus is taken over by a screen, and; 2) whatever’s happening on the screen is outside of my control.

So I can play Super Duper Racing Games VI, but an abrupt full-screen slide transition in an otherwise static puzzle game on the iPad might make me woozy for hours. This is why iOS 7’s transitions were a problem for many people – they couldn’t be ‘prepared’ for. That sounds weird, I know, and I recognise it’s tricky for designers to test against. You can have a crack at dealing with visual impairment by using your app or website with your eyes closed. Vestibular issues? Nope. So you need to fallback on testing and rules.

The first of those is pretty simple: find some people who have such issues, and ask them if your app/website causes problems, and for suggestions on how to fix it. On iOS, this might simply mean adding a preference to toggle some animations, such as parallax backgrounds. Regarding rules, ask yourself: do I really need this animation? Do I really need that full-window slide transition? In book and comic apps, can I offer an option to turn off transitions entirely? Have I checked transitions elsewhere within our apps?

The last of those is where Apple fails. The company’s accessibility people have been broadly impressive when it comes to being reactive to comments and requests I’ve made. But it seems there’s no systematic checking of triggers throughout the operating system. That might sound like I’m asking for too much, but if you have reduce motion baked in at system level, use it! It’s absurd to create something that can make millions of people’s lives better, and then pepper the OS and first-party apps with slide animations.

In a sense, I’m fortunate. After I figured out I have this issue (back in the Mac OS X Lion era, where I felt sick for days), I can usually recover from being blasted within minutes; if not, it takes a few hours. I’ve heard from people who can be knocked out for days.

So as web/app designers, ask yourself: what can I do to improve my work for people with vestibular disorders? And then think widely: what can I do to make my content accessible to everyone? That should be the goal of computing, not saying “well, just don’t use that”.