Make client-side redirects instant, not timed
A client-side redirect is code inside a page that tells the browser to go and fetch a different address. G110 says make it instant, with a delay of zero, and keep the redirecting page free of anything other than the redirect. W3C would rather you did it on the server. A server redirect never shows the reader a page that is about to vanish. W3C lists G110 as a sufficient technique for 3.2.5 Change on Request, a Level AAA rule, reached through a more specific technique rather than on its own. The timed version is not a lesser fix. It is a recorded failure. W3C files timed meta refresh as a way of breaking 2.2.1 Timing Adjustable, 2.2.4 Interruptions and 3.2.5, so a countdown redirect is a defect against three rules at once.
How we find it in an audit
A scan can find a meta refresh with a non-zero delay wherever one sits in the markup, which is the clean case. Our reviewers then chase the redirects a scan cannot see, the ones built in script. We look for interstitial pages too. A page that carries real content and then jumps is the version readers get caught by.
How affected users experience it
A screen reader reads a page in order, at the pace of speech, so a ten-second countdown is not ten seconds of reading. The listener may be three sentences in when the page is replaced underneath them, and nothing announces why. People who read slowly, people using magnification, and anyone who glanced away land in the same place. On a page they did not ask for, with no memory of what they lost.
Passes vs. fails
Passes
The old URL redirects with no delay at all, or better, the server answers with a 301 so no disappearing page is ever rendered.
Fails
An old URL shows 'This page has moved. You will be redirected in 10 seconds', then jumps away while the reader is still on the first line.
How this gets tested
The W3C publishes test rules that define what a checker looks for here.
- Meta element has no refresh delayA tool can check this
- Meta element has no refresh delay (no exception)A tool can check this
Other ways to satisfy this rule
16 guides on this site are filed under 3.2.5 Change on Request. W3C lists this one as sufficient for that rule when it is implemented through a more specific technique, so the condition is part of the test rather than a footnote to it.
- G76sufficientUpdate content only when the user asks
- H76sufficientMake meta refresh redirects instant, never timed
- H83sufficientWarn users when links open new windows
- SCR19sufficientNever change context when a select changes
- SCR24sufficientOpen new windows only when the user asks
- SVR1sufficientRedirect on the server, not with a timed refresh
This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique G110: Using an instant client-side redirect. W3C publishes its techniques as guidance rather than as the standard, and says so on every one of them. The success criterion is what conformance is measured against, and a technique is one documented way to meet it.