Re: meta refresh (3.7.5.3. Pragma directives)

On Wed, 8 Aug 2007, Jason White wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 08, 2007 at 12:29:35AM +0200, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
> >
> > 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 
> > advising 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.
> 
> This is exactly the nature of the problem which WCAG seeks to address: 
> people with motor, cognitive or sensory disabilities, users of voice 
> browsers, etc., who cannot read the document quickly enough will have it 
> changed unexpectedly as the result of the refresh, without having had an 
> opportunity to read it in its entirety.
> 
> The algorithm in section 3.7.5.1, step 22, does not allow for the 
> possibility that refresh may be disabled entirely, that it may be 
> presented as a link activatable by the user for example, or that a 
> minimum time-out may have been established in the user agent's 
> configuration. The only possibility accounted for is that the user may 
> interactively cancel the refresh before the time-out has elapsed.
> 
> For these reasons, step 22 needs to be modified so as to allow for 
> alternative UA actions in response to refresh requests. At a minimum, 
> step 22 should be conditional upon UA configuration parameters.

I've made step 22 far more flexible.

Cheers,
-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Thursday, 14 February 2008 04:37:26 UTC