Let users extend a script's time limit
SCR1 is a sufficient technique, and it is only sufficient in a pair. W3C files it alongside SCR16, the warning half, so a script that quietly offers an extension nobody is told about still leaves the rule unmet. The half SCR1 covers is the extension itself. When your script sets the deadline, hand the user a control that asks for more time, and let them push the limit out to at least ten times its default length. W3C's shape for that control is a small form, offered from inside the warning, where the user says how much longer they need. What SCR1 does not cover is the data. Keeping a half-filled form alive across a timeout is a separate obligation with its own technique, so an extension button is not protection for anything already typed.
How we find it in an audit
No scanner has any way to see a time limit, so this one is ours to test by hand from start to finish. A reviewer starts a stopwatch, sits inside the flow, and lets the clock run all the way down. Three questions then decide it. Does anything offer more time before the deadline lands. Can the user take that offer without abandoning the task. And does the extension reach ten times the original limit rather than one polite extra minute. A control that grants sixty seconds once has not met SCR1.
How affected users experience it
Reading a page through a screen reader takes longer than skimming it by eye, and filling a form with a switch device takes longer still. Someone with tremor, someone with low vision, someone with a reading disability. All of them are working against the same clock, and the clock was set for none of them. When it runs out with nothing offered, the page that comes back is a sign-in screen. Twenty minutes of careful typing is gone. Nothing on the screen says where it went.
Passes vs. fails
Passes
<button onclick="addTime()">I need more time</button>
// addTime() resets the clock, and the user can keep asking until the limit reaches ten times its default.Fails
// The deadline is set once and never mentioned again.
setTimeout(endSession, 15 * 60 * 1000);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
11 guides on this site are filed under 2.2.1 Timing Adjustable. W3C lists this one as sufficient for that rule only alongside SCR16, so the pair is what passes and neither half does on its own.
- G4sufficientLet users pause moving content and resume it
- G133sufficientOffer longer session limits before forms begin
- G180sufficientLet users extend time limits tenfold
- G198sufficientLet users switch time limits off entirely
- SCR16sufficientWarn users before a time limit runs out
- SCR33sufficientGive scrolling content a pause and a resume
This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique SCR1: Allowing the user to extend the default time limit. 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.