Safety PSA & Legibility Reminder

Hello there everyone, it's time for another PSA! PokéFarm allows a remarkable degree of personalisation of user-posted content, but that mighty power is very easy to misuse. That's why we have the Legibility / Template Rules, covering forum posts, forum signatures, and About Mes. Unfortunately, lately we've been noticing a lot (a lot) of issues with legibility. "Why be so nitpicky?" You may ask. "Let people express themselves!" We love to see players express their individuality, but not at the expense of the comfort or especially safety of their fellow players. Not only can legibility issues cause discomfort ("My eyes! They burn!"), but they can actually result in harm coming to others. We recently made an update to Site Rule 7 ("Legibility"), section B, regarding not using images that could potentially cause seizures in people who view them. To clarify, we've always had that rule; it was just expanded a bit. Seriously, don't use flashing, blinking, or flickering images. This includes things like sprites or adopts that rapidly change position or colour. Slow them down. Please. Moving images with stripes or the colour red are particularly hazardous. Seizures are by far the most serious health issue that can be caused by carelessly-posted content, but they aren't the only one. Migraines can also be triggered by the same type of content, especially in regards to very bright colours, harshly-contrasting content (like bright red or yellow text on a black background), or barely-contrasting content (like blue text on a green background). To migraine sufferers (including myself and Methos), arriving on a webpage with content like this might as well be called "getting slapped in the eyeballs".

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In regards to the less-harmful legibility issues we've been seeing, most have to do with templates. If you create and especially distribute templates for About Mes or the forums, pay attention to this bit. Below are a series of questions we'd like you to answer (in your head, no need to post here) about the templates you make:

1. Are my text/background/text link/header colours all defined as a specific colour?
2. Is the contrast ratio between my text and background colours at least 4.5? You can use this easy tool to check.
3. Are all my text sizes, including my image and/or coding credits, at least 10 pt? This is 10 pt, not px; 10 px is too small. (Note, this still applies if you're using an image to display your crediting.)
4. Are all images I used in the template, including sprites, background images, and icons, properly credited? You can find help with crediting on the Art Usage and Crediting thread. (Remember that "found on Google" is not valid crediting.)
5. Is my template mobile-friendly? You can use Alt+F1 to check if you're on a PC. If anything breaks, such as your background image or tables, it's not mobile-friendly and needs to be fixed.
6. Are all of my elements legible when the mouse is hovering over them? Please note that hover colors are subject to contrast checks as well.

If you answered "no" to any of the above, or weren't sure about your answer, you should not be using or distributing the template.

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"I just realized my template(s) have issues, but I can't fix them right now. What should I do?" Please take them down from wherever they're displayed. You can use your Template Editor to store, work on, and preview your templates. This especially applies if you distribute free templates. Please don't keep uncorrected templates on public display; other players will keep grabbing the code to use, even if you tell them not to.

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TLDR: Seriously, go back and read at least the first part. It's important. If you make templates, read all of it.

yeah, people should be more considerate regarding the photos they send, people can actually get hurt from this. the tem plate thing isn't a issue for me tho, i don't even know what in the name of heck they do LMAO

I don't think it's THAT hard to slow down a gif/animation that could trigger such a response. A reminder that this is a fangame with an anime that has an episode infamous for that very same reason.

Is there a way to curb how many templates are posted for others to use that break legibility issues? I have no coding abilities, though I so wish I could, so I cannot create my own or even edit templates that break legibility issues. Could the site implement a lock on templates for others posts until mods can review them, much like we do for contest applications, to keep breaking legibility rules templates off the forums and users wouldn’t use them, unintentionally and unknowingly breaking the rules. I don’t have to first clue to look through the bbcode to know if breaks the rules or not, so I have used templates a number of times and broken the rules. Each time I reset my templates, it takes time to switch all my info over and to put it in the correct places, not that that is anyones problem of my own, it’s just frustrating to do it so often. Could this be a probable thing to do or would it just be too hard to implement?

Is it okay to "fix" a template to fit the rules if the creator is no longer on the site (3+ months in my case)?

So I need to delete that icon-gif from my signature? Or even better: Can I use it if I transform it into a .png icon?

having a problem with fast flashing images some times leads to dangrous happeining to someone, it's not good at lest thes mod people under stand this problem beacuse somethig accualty happend on vr chat a person was wearing a brightly colour skin and floping it around cause that person having that health problem to trigger not even funny.

I appreciate this policy so much as a disabled person! Accessibility FTW :)

I'm not really sure what you mean by the second part of that, if you're asking if you can use a rule-breaking .gif in a .png format, how would the format itself change anything? Unless you're talking about making it a still image, which is obviously always fine. Obviously what is disallowed is subjective to mods, but most animated gifs are still *allowed*. The problem is simply with flashy/fast gifs that can trigger migraines or seizures. And if you're ever unsure, PMing a mod is always going to be the most certain answer-- I know yosei-san deals a lot with legibility/gifs so they'd probably get back to you quickly c:

The problem itself here is that the .gif is probably - but I'm not really sure - (thats why I'm asking) flickering since it's moving the hands very quickly. Offcourse, is just a .gif with only 3 frames, but I just wanna be sure to don't create any problems to who is suffering health issue.