Accessibility rule: Page refreshes or redirects without warning, explained

A meta element is sometimes used to periodically refresh pages or to redirect users to another page. However, if the time given to the user is too short, they may get disoriented by the unexpected refresh or redirect.

Who is impacted by this barrier?

While sudden refreshes and redirects are disorienting for many users, people with low vision or cognitive impairments are particularly impacted. Furthermore, sudden refresh causes screen readers to jump back to the top of the page disrupting navigation significantly.

Meta refresh may also have SEO implications. Since the technique is often used by spammers to fool search engines, when used extensively, it may cause search engines to consider the website suspicious.

How does the rule work?

Siteimprove has two rules addressing unwarned refreshing and redirecting.

Page refreshes or redirects without warning (within 20 hrs.) (A) 

This rule checks that refreshes and redirects implemented using the <meta> element are not delayed. In practice, to fix this issue, the time of the content attribute needs to be either 0 or greater than 72,000 seconds, corresponding to 20 hours.

Page refreshes or redirects without warning, without exception (AAA)

This rule checks that refreshes and redirects implemented using the <meta> element are not delayed in any instance. To fix this issue, the time of the content attribute is anything but 0.