Movement accommodation factor is normally specified by manufacturers of joint sealants for designers to design dimension of joints. It is stated as the total movement that a joint sealant can tolerate and is typically expressed as a percentage of the minimumdesign joint width. Failure to fulfil this requirement results in overstressing the joint sealants. 

For example if the expected movement to be accommodated by a certain movement joint is 4mm, the minimum design joint width can be computed as 4÷30% = 13.3mm when the movement accommodation factor is 30%. If the calculated joint width is too large, designers can either select another brand of joint sealants with higher movement accommodation factor or to redesign arrangement and locations of joints.