Please do not use auto-scrolling content on the web and in applications

Hacker News · Feb 28, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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Perhaps well-intended, the auto-scrolling content can be a real nightmare for multiple groups of users. I’ve done a mobile app audit and turning on screen reader exposed quite a messy experience – and yes, web can suffer from the same issue. Some of us still remember the wild wild web of the previous millennium, with animated gifs and even dedicated HTML element called marquee – a very dynamic and moving visual medium where texts and images flied, mostly horizontally, but sometimes also totally randomly. It was funny for some people, but a potential disaster to others. Sometimes we can still see some “flying” texts and images today and they seem to ignore the fact that such elements – when there is no possibility to pause, stop, or hide them – make some people dizzy, or disoriented or make them loose their focus and sometimes even leave the page as soon as possible. But sometimes we can get another negative effect of auto-scrolling things, especially on mobile applications, and I want you to please reconsider the pattern. Scrolling on mobiles, using TalkBack screen reader (Android phones), emits sound cues These sound cues are extremely valuable – as we get the audio confirmation of how far we have scrolled. Such and similar, audio, cues are sometimes called earcons (like icon-s, but for the ear, therefore earcons). And yes – hearing how far we scrolled when we can’t see the screen (but can hear) is a good thing. Until somebody uses auto-scrolling, as we will see. In a recent audit of a native app, I had to turn on the screen-reader (I started with Android, so I’ve used it’s TalkBack), and I was met with an unintentional audio symphony that reminded me of the prehistoric arcade computer games where all we had was a simple speaker that could emit some frequencies. It was really not pleasant for the ears – I was forced to listen to ticking sounds with different pitches, just like if my mobile phone was infected with a vicious virus that would spam me via it’s audio. And it could not be stopped there and then. I made a simple proof of concept with a couple of auto-scrolling areas of an imaginary app. Demo time I made a simple proof of concept with a couple of auto-scrolling areas of an imaginary app. You can download the 50 second long mp3 file (about 787KB) if you want to experience it. Short description of what can be heard in the mp3 audio file: Talkback: Proof of concept – hear the auto scrolling areas, heading Narration: We can then hear the sounds similar to ticks, with different pitches, constantly, hearing the actual content is sometimes quite difficult and we need to focus a lot Talkback: A Proof of Concept for demo purposes only, please do not Narration: Then I navigate through the interface, hear some announcements like buttons and cards and so on, but ticking with different pitches is constant and really annoying Not only screen reader users… So – it was quite challenging to really test the rest of the view of the app and very annoying. I can not imagine having to use such an app for a longer period of time. I am reflecting only on the blind user experience here, but we must also consider other groups of people – for example people with cognitive disabilities, people that get distracted by such perpetually moving elements, people that use zoom a lot and something is always animating and also people that can even experience physical pain because of their sensitivities. Android – both web pages and native apps, iOS seems to be immune This was an issue with TalkBack 16.2 (latest at the time of this post), but also with previous version (latest version 15). I’ve tested this with a native Android app. Then I was curious and got the same effect also on a website, using JavaScript to manipulate scrollLeft. So auto-scrolling for both web and mobile can be an issue for TalkBack. And yes – I’ve checked same application with iPhone (both iOS 26.2 and iOS 18.7.3) – and VoiceOver does not have this issue. Please drop auto-scrolling or at least make it possible to pause or stop My recommendation was to drop the auto-scrolling totally. After showing them the effect, they removed it and rather fix it with text that overflows, even if it is long and perhaps not visually appealing, and with cards/carousels that can be controlled manually. User settings and preferences, like reduced motion, are also a good mechanism, but we need to know that not all users are aware of it and therefore manual controls are essential, even if some may wish otherwise. Marquee in HTML world is deprecated (although weirdly still working in some browsers) and this for a good reason. But native mobile app and also web-based auto-scrolling is even worse – especially on Android – where we are forced to hear the perpetual “earcons” pitching up and down (marquee at least don’t have that effect when I tested it quickly (please still don’t use it)). To conclude – I hope you now have another reason for not to use the auto-scrolling. Sure, adding play/stop/pause controls could make page or app conforming to WCAG and EN 301 594, but as you can probably understand – TalkBack users will still experience this and would really not appreciate it while looking for the controls to stop it.