---
name: Pause, stop, hide
slug: pause-stop-hide
category: accessibility
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-26T00:00:00.000Z
definition: A visible control for content that moves, blinks, scrolls, or
  updates on its own, so a reader can stop it before reading around it.
aliases:
  - name: pause button
    source: community
  - name: carousel pause control
    source: community
  - name: auto-updating content control
    source: wcag
tags:
  - wcag
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - prefers-reduced-motion
    - audio-control
    - flashing-content
    - timeout-warning
    - autoplay
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso:
    - marquee
    - carousel
    - attract-mode
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: "WCAG 2.2: Pause, Stop, Hide"
    url: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/#pause-stop-hide
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: something animates or refreshes without being asked
---

Success criterion 2.2.2 covers two kinds of content and asks for one thing. The first kind is
anything that moves, blinks, or scrolls by itself for more than five seconds while other
content is on the page. The second is anything that updates itself: a live count, a feed that
prepends, a figure that refreshes. For both, the reader must be given a way to pause, to stop,
or to hide it, and the control has to be reachable without leaving what they were doing. Five
seconds is the whole of the exemption: a short entrance animation is fine, and a
[carousel](/carousel) that has rotated three times while somebody was reading the paragraph
beside it is not.

The reason is not motion sensitivity, though the two overlap. It is that moving content beside
static content steals attention on a loop, and auto-updating content moves the thing a reader
was in the middle of reading. Someone using [screen magnification](/screen-magnification) loses
their place when the layout reflows under them; someone reading slowly loses the sentence every
time the carousel turns. Stopping is enough. The criterion asks for an escape, not for a
transport bar, and a single visible Pause that actually stops everything is a complete answer.

This is worth keeping apart from [prefers-reduced-motion](/prefers-reduced-motion), which is
often offered as though it discharged the duty. A preference is a standing request, made once
in a system setting, that a person carries to every site. A pause control is an escape offered
in the moment, on this page, for content that is moving right now. Honouring the preference is
necessary and it does not cover the reader who has no such preference and simply wants the
thing to stop. Nor does an endlessly looping [pulse animation](/pulse-animation) get a pass for
being small: it blinks, it does not stop, and if there is text next to it, it is in scope.

The uncomfortable case for this site is its own [attract mode](/attract-mode). A specimen that
plays itself, on a loop, beside an article somebody is reading, is precisely the content this
criterion exists for, which is why every stage carries a visible play control that stops the
script, why the stage pauses when it leaves the viewport, and why a stated motion preference
turns attract off entirely rather than merely slowing it down.