Let users postpone automatic content updates
A page that refreshes on its own schedule, and a reader who was halfway through a sentence. G75 hands them a way to hold that update until they are ready for it. W3C files it as sufficient for its interruptions rule, which is Level AAA and covers exactly this, non-emergency updates arriving without anybody asking. Two shapes count. A preference where automatic updating is off by default and the reader picks the frequency, or a warning before each update with the option to suppress it. Both move the timing into the reader's hands, and that is the whole idea. Emergency information sits outside it, which is why the rule says non-emergency.
How we find it in an audit
Anything that reloads or re-renders on a timer gets found first, and the usual candidates are live scores, price tickers, dashboards, liveblogs and inboxes. Then a reviewer goes looking for the control. A frequency setting counts, a warning the reader can wave away counts, and a page that does not refresh until it is asked to counts most of all. We check what the default is as well, since a preference buried in a settings panel and switched on by default only helps the people who go hunting for it.
How affected users experience it
An automatic refresh throws a screen reader's reading position back to the top of the page. Somebody reading the fourth paragraph is returned to the first, mid-sentence, with nothing announcing why. Do that every twenty seconds and the page stops being readable rather than merely irritating. Magnifier users lose their place the same way, and readers with cognitive disabilities lose the thread of what they were doing, which takes far longer to recover than a scroll position.
Passes vs. fails
Passes
A Hold updates control queues the changes and shows 14 pending, so the reader decides when the table is allowed to move.
Fails
A league table refreshes every 20 seconds, snapping the reading position back to the top of the page each time.
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
5 guides on this site are filed under 2.2.4 Interruptions. W3C lists this one as sufficient for that rule on its own. Implement it correctly, in a way your readers' software actually supports, and the rule is met.
This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique G75: Providing a mechanism to postpone any updating of content. 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.