• 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 

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

screen.orientation.lock('portrait');

Why it matters

Someone using a tablet mounted in landscape on a wheelchair cannot rotate their device, so the listing page becomes completely unusable, forced into portrait.

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 entirely and build the layout to work responsively in both portrait and landscape.

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

Outcome

A wheelchair user with a landscape-mounted tablet can now browse listings without ever needing to rotate anything.

Who is affected

Wheelchair users with device mounts fixed in one orientation, and anyone with a tripod or stand fixed in landscape, are locked out entirely.

Learn more

Related scenarios