Success Criterion 1.3.4
Conformance level AA
W3C reference F97

App Locked Into One Screen Orientation With No Real Reason

1.3.4 — Orientation

Scenario

Setting

A real-estate marketplace's listing page

What’s wrong

The app locks itself to portrait or landscape — users with a mounted device (e.g., on a wheelchair) can't rotate and can't use it.

Example

A real-estate marketplace's listing page runs into this exact issue: the app locks itself to portrait or landscape — users with a mounted device (e.g., on a wheelchair) can't rotate and can't use it.

Why it matters

People whose devices are mounted or who cannot rotate a display freely. Here, on a real-estate marketplace's listing page, the result is they can't read the text against its background.

How to test

Rotate the device or browser emulator to both orientations: if the app locks to one and refuses to render in the other, it fails (unless the content is genuinely orientation-essential, like a piano app).

How to fix

Remove the orientation lock so the app renders in both portrait and landscape.

Outcome

After the fix, the same visitor to a real-estate marketplace's listing page can now read the text clearly against its background.

Who is affected

People whose devices are mounted or who cannot rotate a display freely.

Learn more

Understanding Understanding document (opens in a new tab)
Technique Related technique (opens in a new tab)