Re: meta refresh (3.7.5.3. Pragma directives)

At 16:02 +0100 UTC, on 2007-08-07, Philip TAYLOR wrote:

[...]

> We use constructs such as this to (a) advise
> users that a page has moved (explicitly),
> and (b) take them to that page automatically [...]
>
> Could you explain to me the negative effect this
> might have on someone dependent on uncompromised
> accessibility ?

The problem is that you're making an assumption about how long the user needs
to consume your advice -- yet you cannot know this as an author. (The user
may be a slow reader; may be a slow reader in your language; plenty of other
cases to imagine, when you stop to think about it.) Thus your Refresh defeats
your own stated purpose of advicing the user.

When there is a good reason for such advice, it's best to leave it to the
user to decide how quick or how slow to follow you along. Using a refresh in
such cases is like giving someone a book and dictate at what speed he must
read it.

Still, while I consider this bad authoring practice, IMO the most sensible
solution is for UAs to allow users to disable Refresh.


-- 
Sander Tekelenburg
The Web Repair Initiative: <http://webrepair.org/>

Received on Tuesday, 7 August 2007 22:39:25 UTC