Twitter will no longer animate PNG files after trolls seized the Epilepsy Foundation’s designation and hashtags last month to address potentially seizure-inducing images to epileptic and photosensitive people. The corporate says it lately discovered a bug that had enabled individuals to add multiple animated images to a tweet and bypass Twitter’s autoplay protections utilizing the file format.
That stated, Twitter additionally says it is not aware that anyone used APNG to attempt to set off seizures; it just needs to avoid the possibility that people achieve this in the future.”We want everybody to have protected expertise on Twitter,” the company said in a tweet. “APNGs were enjoyable. However, they don’t consider autoplay settings, so we’re eliminating the ability to add them to tweets. This is for the safety of individuals with sensitivity to motion and flashing imagery, together with these with epilepsy.” Twitter also stated APNGs used up lots of data, and will in some circumstances, cause app crashes.
To make up for the lack of the added functionality that comes with APNGs, Twitter says it is working on adding alt-text to GIFs, which will assist make them more accessible to individuals who depend upon screen readers to navigate the internet. It’s also looking into building the same feature that’s “better for you and your Twitter experience.”