I've seen several laudable posts on the network and associated blogs about SE's dedication to accessibility and how that informed the types of affiliate ads allowed:
- This blog post - "...our effort to make Stack Overflow accessible to all. ...bring our sites closer to conformance with the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Level AA. We are also interested in hearing additional recommendations from you, if you encounter barriers that WCAG AA doesn’t address."
- This answer - "I care deeply about creating accessible software. As the TeamDAG product manager at Stack Overflow, I want to see us make improvements for a range of users with differing abilities."
- This answer - "...we will absolutely take all criteria set by the WCAG in mind... Our policy has always been to provide relevant advertising in a minimally obtrusive way... We actively work to prevent ads from harming or impeding our users' ability to navigate our sites. These ads will not be animated or contain any flash which includes the carousel style ads..."
- This comment - [In response to "will animated ads be allowed"]: "No. Animated ads are still unanimously hated by pretty much everyone.... Ads will still follow all of the rules that we currently have in place."
Now other ads are being tested, and it's a bit demoralising to be told "animated ads will be allowed", with no justification and no reference to the exclusionary effect on accessibility.
Does Stack Exchange have an accessibility policy as some of those posts suggest? If so, can we read it?
Note: This isn't a duplicate of the "We're testing advertisements..." post - it's (partly) in response to it. I have been impressed by SE's commitment to improving accessibility, but allowing animated ads is a backward step in that goal. So I'm seeking clarification on animated page elements vs WCAG 2.2.2 in particular. But I'm trying to be constructive and community-minded by also seeking a broader understanding of SE's position on accessibility in general, because this is an important thing for people with disabilities to know about any site we interact with. Animated page elements are only one aspect of web accessibility and there are many other criteria that visitors to SE who have web-relevant disabilities might want to know about.