On the surface, it’s a simple component. It’s a big red button that sticks to the top of the screen. If you click it, you’re taken away to BBC W

Why GOV.UK’s Exit this Page component doesn’t use the Escape key

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2024-10-09 23:00:14

On the surface, it’s a simple component. It’s a big red button that sticks to the top of the screen. If you click it, you’re taken away to BBC Weather.

If you press the ⇧ Shift key on your keyboard three times, you get a visual indicator that you are activating the button. Upon the third press, the page you’re on is blanked out and you’re redirected away to… well, BBC Weather again.

It’s intended to be a safety tool. A way for people in unstable, potentially violent, domestic situations to quickly leave the page.

It’s a decent question. Many other implementations of buttons like this exist, and of the ones that provide a keyboard shortcut, they almost universally use the Escape key: Esc.

Basically, it doesn’t quite work like that. There was a veritable rabbit hole of barriers that ultimately led us towards using a different key.

This is literally the last thing we want to happen for a feature whose sole job is to load a different page from the one you’re on.