Artex is on a very large number of ceilings around here, because it was what you did to a ceiling from the sixties through to the nineties and it was cheap. Most people who ring about it have decided they want it gone and assume that means scraping it off. It almost never does.
There are two sensible routes and one that is dangerous. The sensible ones are skimming over the top where the pattern is shallow, and boarding over it where the pattern is heavy. The dangerous one is sanding or scraping it, which is the one thing that is never done on this job for a reason that has nothing to do with the finish.
The asbestos question, answered first
Textured coatings made before the mid eighties can contain white asbestos, and a lot of them do. Left alone and painted, it is not doing any harm, and it is specifically the act of sanding, scraping or dry cutting it that puts fibres into the air of the room you are standing in.
So none of that happens here. The texture is not sanded, it is not scraped and it is not dry cut. It is either skimmed over, which seals it under two coats of plaster, or boarded over, which seals it behind a board. If you want to know what is in it rather than work around it, a sample test is cheap and it is worth doing before any work starts, not after.
A shallow pattern that is firmly stuck takes a skim. The surface is sealed with a bonding agent so the plaster does not dry out too fast against it, then the high points of the pattern get knocked back wet rather than sanded, and two coats go over the lot.
It works on a fine stipple or a light swirl. It stops working when the pattern is deep, because the plaster needed to bury a heavy swirl is thicker than a skim is supposed to be, and thick plaster over a pattern cracks along the ridges as it shrinks. The test is simple: if you can get a fingernail into it, it is going to be boarded.
Boarding over is faster than it sounds and it gives a better result on anything heavily textured. New plasterboard is fixed through the old ceiling into the joists, the joints are scrimmed, and it is skimmed as a normal ceiling. The artex is sealed in behind it and nobody has disturbed it.
The cost of it is height: the board plus the skim takes the ceiling down by around fifteen millimetres, which is nothing in most rooms and worth thinking about in a low one. Downlights and roses come down and are reset through the new board rather than being boarded around and left in a recess.
Artexed walls are less common than ceilings and they are treated the same way, except that walls get more light across them so the flatness matters more. A wall that was combed rather than stippled is usually a boarding job.
Where there is coving already, it often has artex run right up to it or over it. Boarding up to the coving leaves a visible step unless it is dealt with, so either the coving comes off and is replaced afterwards, or the board is stopped short and the gap is made good. Which one is right gets decided on the day, in front of you, rather than assumed in a price.
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If the house had it done before about the mid eighties, it might, and a lot did. A sample test is cheap and quick. Either way the work is the same here, because nothing gets sanded or scraped and the texture ends up sealed under plaster or behind board.
Can you just scrape it off?
No, and nobody should. Scraping and sanding a textured coating is exactly what releases fibres if there are any in it. Skimming over it or boarding over it both leave it sealed and undisturbed.
Will skimming hide a deep pattern?
Not reliably. Plaster thick enough to bury a heavy swirl shrinks as it sets and cracks along the ridges. If a fingernail goes into the pattern, the honest answer is to board it, and that is what gets priced.
How much height does boarding lose me?
About fifteen millimetres with the skim on it. In a normal room nobody notices. In a low ceilinged one it is worth measuring before deciding, and it gets measured at the estimate.
