WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

RE: Forcing a page refresh

for

From: julian.rickards@ndm.gov.on.ca
Date: Jul 8, 2003 1:58PM

Don't use an automatic page refresh as that will interfere with a user's
experience and break accessibility rules.

However, you can use JavaScript as long as you have a <noscript> block which
has a static image. The static image can be changed by your server so that
someone with JS disabled can manually refresh the page and see a different
image.

Or, you could have an animated gif that comprises of all of the images -
however, it does add to the download time. WRT accessibility, as long as the
animation does not occur faster than once per second, you won't run up
against the "flashing and blinking" issue.

Jules

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wendy R. Mullin [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 3:47 PM
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Subject: Forcing a page refresh
>
>
> Hi -
>
> On our home page - http://www.sc.edu/ - we rotate an image every five
> minutes from a database of images.
>
> However, we do not force a refresh. For example, if someone
> has their
> browser pointed to www.sc.edu for more than five minutes, we
> do not force
> the refresh on them. They have to either click the refresh
> button to see
> the new image or leave the page and return to it again.
>
> It has been strongly suggested by some members of our Web
> team that we
> should rotate the image "every few seconds" while someone is
> on our home
> page, so that visitors can see a "representative selection"
> of photos of
> our University.
>
> I've always thought that forcing a refresh without the user's
> knowledge or
> consent would be inaccessible. However, I find that now that I am
> presented with this situation, I can't remember on what
> information I've
> based this assumption.
>
> * Is forcing a page refresh inaccessible?
> * Does anybody out there have an automatically refreshing
> page? If so, are
> there any pluses or minuses associated with this other than
> accessibility?
>
> I'd appreciate any comments or opinions.
>
> Thanks.
>
>
> Wendy R. Mullin
> Web Developer, University of South Carolina
> 1244 Blossom Street, Columbia, South Carolina 29208
> voice: 803-777-6785 | fax: 803-777-4149
> <EMAIL REMOVED> | http://isg.csd.sc.edu/~wmullin/
>
>
> ----
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
> visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
>


----
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/