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Another issue with redirects: users with disabilities may have problems
with them.
From the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines from W3C:
Guideline 7: Ensure user control of time-sensitive content changes.
Some people with cognitive or visual disabilities are unable to read
moving text quickly enough or at all. Movement can also cause such
a distraction that the rest of the page becomes unreadable for people
with cognitive disabilities. Screen readers are unable to read moving text.
People with physical disabilities might not be able to move quickly or
accurately enough to interact with moving objects.
Checkpoint 7.5: Until user agents provide the ability to stop auto-redirect,
do not use markup to redirect pages automatically. Instead,
configure the server to perform redirects.
For more information: www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/
Susan Schulken
Senior Technical Writer (among other things)
U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division
susan -dot- schulken -at- usdoj -dot- gov