Interface usability and accessibility are crucial for autistic people because of the challenges they may confront while navigating the Internet. Nevertheless, limited empirical evidence is available from investigations of web accessibility and usability for autistic users. The core aim of this work was to empirically investigate the effects of irrelevant animation in user interfaces (UI). We analysed the impact of animation on autistic and non-autistic individuals, as well as the impact of animated UI objects on the performance of both cohorts while conducting various task types. Our findings suggest that animation significantly affects task performance for both cohorts, with autistic users more severely affected: autistic individuals are distracted to a greater extent, exacerbating frustration and necessitating greater mental exertion.
The results of our study will help practitioners to establish greater comprehension of the autistic population’s particular traits, as well as provide a basis for UI design guidelines so that autistic people will find interfaces more usable and accessible.