Re: Accessible "Panic button"

On 13/06/2019 01:21, Quentin Christensen wrote:
> 
> NV Access were contacted by someone recently who is working on a website 
> for victims of domestic violence.  One feature of many such websites is 
> a "panic button" that someone browsing the site can press to quickly be 
> taken away to say a blank Google search page - Ideally, the panic button 
> would also be able to remove the site from the browser history.

This sounds like another example of reinventing functionality that is 
already there and doing it in myriads of subtly different ways, to 
confuse users.

I think it would be better to encourage using their browser's private 
browsing feature.  At least for desktops, one can typically close the 
window in only a few clicks or keystrokes (e.g. Alt-F4), and it will do 
a much more reliable job of suppressing history, than any scripted 
attempt to do the same.

Any button to do this is going to need scripting enabled, and it appears 
that you can launch pages in private mode from javascript, on most 
browsers, with a target of _incognito.  That might well work as a 
modifier on anchor elements, as well.

I assume that this is a site that has non advert based funding, as web 
hosting that relies on adverts probably doesn't want cookies to be lost, 
so will probably try to frustrate any attempt to go private.

I'd expect any scripting that tries to wipe history would end up 
producing warning dialogue boxes, that would delay the process.  I think 
the same would apply to any on-screen close the window button.

Received on Saturday, 15 June 2019 22:55:04 UTC