“Consent notices are obstructing my view”: Viewing sticky elements on responsive websites under the magnifying glass

Abstract

The practice of using consent notices on websites has received much criticism and attention among researchers. Much of the research has addressed unethical aspects of consent notices while less attention has been devoted to implications for accessibility. This study thus set out to explore implications of such elements for low vision users who rely on browser magnification to access information on the web. A selection of the 100 most frequently used or formally important websites in Norway was manually studied with heuristic evaluation to assess their accessibility with high magnification. The results show that a large portion of the websites contained blocking consent notices that make the websites inaccessible while magnified. Also, most of the websites employed sticky permanent elements such as navigation menus that obstruct much, in some cases all, of the screen real estate in the magnified view. The study also uncovered patterns that preserve accessibility. A key implication of this study is that web developers should consider narrow use cases explicitly. Recommendations are provided on how to avoid inaccessibility for users relying on magnification in narrow viewports.