Understanding SC 3.2.3: Consistent Navigation (Level AA)

In Brief

Goal: Content can be navigated more predictably.
What to do: Consistently order navigation that repeats across multiple pages.
Why it's important: Content that behaves predictably is especially important to people with disabilities.

Success Criterion (SC)

Navigational mechanisms that are repeated on multiple Web pages within a set of Web pages occur in the same relative order each time they are repeated, unless a change is initiated by the user.

Intent

The intent of this Success Criterion is to encourage the use of consistent presentation and layout for users who interact with repeated content within a set of Web pages and need to locate specific information or functionality more than once. Individuals with low vision who use screen magnification to display a small portion of the screen at a time often use visual cues and page boundaries to quickly locate repeated content. Presenting repeated content in the same order is also important for visual users who use spatial memory or visual cues within the design to locate repeated content.

It is important to note that the use of the phrase "same order" in this section is not meant to imply that subnavigation menus cannot be used or that blocks of secondary navigation or page structure cannot be used. Instead, this Success Criterion is intended to assist users who interact with repeated content across Web pages to be able to predict the location of the content they are looking for and find it more quickly when they encounter it again.

Users may initiate a change in the order by using adaptive user agents or by setting preferences so that the information is presented in a way that is most useful to them.

Benefits

Ensuring that repeated components occur in the same order on each page of a site helps users become comfortable that they will able to predict where they can find things on each page. This helps users with cognitive limitations, users with low vision, users with intellectual disabilities, and also those who are blind.

Examples

A consistently located control: A search field is the last item on every Web page in a site. Users can quickly locate the search function.
An expanding navigation menu: A navigation menu includes a list of seven items with links to the main sections of a site. When a user selects one of these items, a list of sub-navigation items is inserted into the top-level navigation menu.
Consistently positioned skip navigation controls: A "skip navigation" (or "skip to main content") link is included as the first link on every page in a Web site. The link allows users to quickly bypass heading information and navigational content and begin interacting with the main content of a page.
Skip to navigation link: Navigational content is consistently located at the end of each page in a set of Web pages. A "skip to navigation" link is consistently located at the beginning of each page so that keyboard users can easily locate it when needed.

Related Resources

Resources are for information purposes only, no endorsement implied.

Detweiler, M.C. and Omanson, R.C. (1996), Ameritech Web Page User Interface Standards and Design Guidelines.
IBM: User experience design - Navigation.

Techniques

Each numbered item in this section represents a technique or combination of techniques that the WCAG Working Group deems sufficient for meeting this Success Criterion. However, it is not necessary to use these particular techniques. For information on using other techniques, see Understanding Techniques for WCAG Success Criteria, particularly the "Other Techniques" section.

Sufficient Techniques

G61: Presenting repeated components in the same relative order each time they appear

Advisory Techniques

Although not required for conformance, the following additional techniques should be considered in order to make content more accessible. Not all techniques can be used or would be effective in all situations.

Failures

The following are common mistakes that are considered failures of this Success Criterion by the WCAG Working Group.

F66: Failure of Success Criterion 3.2.3 due to presenting navigation links in a different relative order on different pages

Key Terms

assistive technology

hardware and/or software that acts as a user agent, or along with a mainstream user agent, to provide functionality to meet the requirements of users with disabilities that go beyond those offered by mainstream user agents

Note

Functionality provided by assistive technology includes alternative presentations (e.g., as synthesized speech or magnified content), alternative input methods (e.g., voice), additional navigation or orientation mechanisms, and content transformations (e.g., to make tables more accessible).

Note

Assistive technologies often communicate data and messages with mainstream user agents by using and monitoring APIs.

Note

The distinction between mainstream user agents and assistive technologies is not absolute. Many mainstream user agents provide some features to assist individuals with disabilities. The basic difference is that mainstream user agents target broad and diverse audiences that usually include people with and without disabilities. Assistive technologies target narrowly defined populations of users with specific disabilities. The assistance provided by an assistive technology is more specific and appropriate to the needs of its target users. The mainstream user agent may provide important functionality to assistive technologies like retrieving Web content from program objects or parsing markup into identifiable bundles.

Example

Assistive technologies that are important in the context of this document include the following:

screen magnifiers, and other visual reading assistants, which are used by people with visual, perceptual and physical print disabilities to change text font, size, spacing, color, synchronization with speech, etc. in order to improve the visual readability of rendered text and images;
screen readers, which are used by people who are blind to read textual information through synthesized speech or braille;
text-to-speech software, which is used by some people with cognitive, language, and learning disabilities to convert text into synthetic speech;
speech recognition software, which may be used by people who have some physical disabilities;
alternative keyboards, which are used by people with certain physical disabilities to simulate the keyboard (including alternate keyboards that use head pointers, single switches, sip/puff and other special input devices.);
alternative pointing devices, which are used by people with certain physical disabilities to simulate mouse pointing and button activations.

same relative order

same position relative to other items

Note

Items are considered to be in the same relative order even if other items are inserted or removed from the original order. For example, expanding navigation menus may insert an additional level of detail or a secondary navigation section may be inserted into the reading order.

set of web pages

collection of web pages that share a common purpose and that are created by the same author, group or organization

Example

Examples include:

a publication which is split across multiple Web pages, where each page contains one chapter or other significant section of the work. The publication is logically a single contiguous unit, and contains navigation features that enable access to the full set of pages.
an e-commerce website shows products in a set of Web pages that all share the same navigation and identification. However, when progressing to the checkout process, the template changes; the navigation and other elements are removed, so the pages in that process are functionally and visually different. The checkout pages are not part of the set of product pages.
a blog on a sub-domain (e.g. blog.example.com) which has a different navigation and is authored by a distinct set of people from the pages on the primary domain (example.com).

Note

Different language versions would be considered different sets of Web pages.

user agent

any software that retrieves and presents Web content for users

Web page

a non-embedded resource obtained from a single URI using HTTP plus any other resources that are used in the rendering or intended to be rendered together with it by a user agent

Note

Although any "other resources" would be rendered together with the primary resource, they would not necessarily be rendered simultaneously with each other.

Note

For the purposes of conformance with these guidelines, a resource must be "non-embedded" within the scope of conformance to be considered a Web page.