Understanding Success Criterion 1.3.6: Identify Purpose

Intent

The intent of this success criterion is to support personalization and preferences in order for more people to use the web, communicate, and interact with society.

Familiar terms and symbols are key for users with a limited vocabulary to being able to use the web. However, what is familiar for some users may not be for other users so programmatically associating user-interface components and icons enables people to load a set of symbols that is appropriate for them.

This success criteria requires the author to add the context, propose, and meaning of symbols, regions, buttons, links, and fields so that user agents knows what they do and can adapt them to make them understandable for the user. It is achieved by adding semantics or metadata that provides this context. It is similar to adding role information (as required by 4.2.1) but instead of providing information about what the UI component is (such as an image) it provides information about what the component represents (such as a link to the home page).

Identifying regions of the page allows people to remove or highlight regions with their user agent.

Products for people who are non-vocal often use symbols to help users communicate. These symbols are in fact people's language. Unfortunately, many of these symbols are both subject to copyright and are not interoperable. That means end-users can only use one device, and cannot use content, apps, or assistive technology that has not been made by a single company.

This success criteria enables symbols to be interoperable so that symbol users can understand different content that was not just made by one company. When users' symbols are mapped to the same nodes then user agents can load the user-understandable symbol. That means people could buy the symbols and use them across different devices or applications. (Note that the symbols would still be proprietary, but they could then be interoperable.)

Benefits

People who benefit have many different cognitive disabilities including:

• Memory
• Focus and attention
• Language-related
• Executive function and decision making.

Meeting this Success Criterion helps users who need extra support or a familiar interface, including the need for:

• Symbols and graphics with which users are familiar
• Fewer features and less cognitive overload
• Keyboard shortcuts.

Examples

• A website uses ARIA landmarks to identify the regions of the page, and users can hide areas that are not the 'main'.
• The links in the navigation of a website are marked-up so that users can add their own icons.
• Icons on a website use are marked-up so that the user can substitute their own icon set into the page.

Related Resources

Resources are for information purposes only, no endorsement implied.

• Issue-papers on personalization and preferences.
• An example of adaptive page.
• Background research document.
• Semantics for adaptive interfaces.

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.

Key Terms