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This is an early unpublished editor's draft; content is incomplete and subject to change.

Consistent navigation labels

In brief

Goal
Actions are more predictable across pages.
What to do
Identify repeating functions consistently.
Why it's important
Consistently identified actions are especially important to people with disabilities.

Supplemental requirement

The labeling of navigation items within blocks of navigation that are repeated on multiple pages/views in the conformance scope or process is consistent.

Except when labels for navigation items that are marked as ‘current’ within the conformance scope or process.

This relates to consistency and terminology within blocks of navigation. The consistent ordering of blocks of navigation within a page/view is covered by ‘Consistent relative order’.

Intent

The intent of this success criterion is to ensure consistent identification of functional components that appear repeatedly within a set of web pages. A strategy that people who use screen readers use when operating a website is to rely heavily on their familiarity with functions that may appear on different web pages. If identical functions have different labels (or, more generally, a different accessible name) on different web pages, the site will be considerably more difficult to use. It may also be confusing and increase the cognitive load for people with cognitive limitations. Therefore, consistent labeling will help.

This consistency extends to the text alternatives. If icons or other non-text items have the same functionality, then their text alternatives should be consistent as well.

If there are two components on a web page that both have the same functionality as a component on another page in a set of web pages, then all 3 must be consistent. Hence the two on the same page will be consistent.

While it is desirable and best practice always to be consistent within a single web page, 3.2.4 Consistent Identification only addresses consistency within a set of web pages where something is repeated on more than one page in the set.

Benefits

Examples

Example 1: Document icon button
A document icon button is used to indicate document download throughout a site. The text alternative for the icon always begins with the word “Download," followed by a shortened form of the document title. Using different text alternatives to identify document names for different documents is a consistent use of text alternatives.
Example 2: Check mark toggle
A toggle control uses a check mark icon. The toggle is used in different contexts, and has different accessible names: on one page, it has a text alternative of "approved", while on another page it has a text alternative of "included". Since the toggles serve different functions, they can have different text alternatives.
Example 3: Consistent references to other pages
A website publishes articles on-line. Each article spans multiple web pages and each page contains a link to the first page, the next page and the previous page of the article. If the references to the next page read "page 2", "page 3", "page 4" etcetera, the labels are not the same but they are consistent. Therefore, these references are not failures of this success criterion.
Example 4: Icon buttons with similar functions
An e-commerce application uses a printer icon button that allows the user to print receipts and invoices. In one part of the application, the printer icon button is labeled "Print receipt" and is used to print receipts, while in another part it is labeled "Print invoice" and is used to print invoices. The labeling is consistent ("Print x"), but the labels are different to reflect the different functions of the icons. Therefore, this example does not fail the success criterion.
Example 5: Save icon button
A common "save" icon is used for buttons throughout a site where page save function is provided. These icons all have a consistent text alternative / accessible name
Example 6: Icon link and adjacent link to same destination
A graphical link containing an icon and a text link are next to each other, and go to the same location. The best practice would be to group them into one link as per [H2: Combining adjacent image and text links for the same resource](https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Techniques/html/H2). However if they are visually positioned one above the other but separated in the source, this may not be possible. To meet the Success Criterion, the link text for these two links need only be consistent, not identical. But best practice is to have identical text so that when users encounter the second one, it is clear that it goes to the same place as the first.
Example 7: Example of a Failure
A submit "search" button on one web page and a "find" button on another web page both have a field to enter a term and list topics in the website related to the term submitted. In this case, the buttons have the same functionality but are not labeled consistently.
Example 8: Failure primarily impacting assistive technology users
Two buttons with the same functionality visually have the same text, but have been given different aria-label="..." accessible names that don't match/include the visible text. For users of assistive technologies, these two buttons will be announced differently and inconsistently. Note that this would likely also fail 2.5.3 Label in Name.

[None]

Tests

Consistent main navigation labels

Procedure

For each repeated block of navigation across multiple pages/views of the conformance scope or process:

  1. The navigation items within each block of navigation have the same names across all pages/views of the conformance scope or process.

Expected results

Key Terms

actively available

available for the user to perceive and use

On the web, “actively available” is content that is not inert (see explanation of inert in HTML).

component

grouping of elements for a distinct function

conformance scope

A product, set of Pages/Views, content, functionality, or components selected to be part of a conformance claim. Where a View or Page is part of a Process, all the Views or Pages in the process must be included.

How a person or organization selects the set is not defined in WCAG3. There maybe informative guidance on selecting a suitable set in future (similar to WCAG-EM), but regional laws or regulations may provide a methodology.

content

information, sensory experience and interactions conveyed

page

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

Where a URI is available and represents a unique set of content, that would be the preferred conformance unit.

platform

software, or collection of layers of software, that lies below the subject software and provides services to the subject software and that allows the subject software to be isolated from the hardware, drivers, and other software below

Platform software both makes it easier for subject software to run on different hardware, and provides the subject software with many services (for example, functions, utilities, libraries) that make the subject software easier to write, keep updated, and work more uniformly with other subject software.

A particular software component might play the role of a platform in some situations and a client in others. For example a browser is a platform for the content of the page but it also relies on the operating system below it.

The platform is the context in which the conformance scope exists.

process

series of views or pages associated with user actions, where actions required to complete an activity are performed, often in a certain order, regardless of the technologies used or whether it spans different sites or domains

view

content that is actively available in a viewport including that which can be scrolled, zoomed, or panned to, and any additional content that is conditionally shown while leaving the rest of the content in the viewport actively available

viewport

object in which the platform presents content

The author has no control of the viewport and almost always has no idea what is presented in a viewport (for example, what is on screen) because it is provided by the platform. On browsers the hardware platform is isolated from the content.

Content can be presented through one or more viewports. Viewports include windows, frames, loudspeakers, and virtual magnifying glasses. A viewport may contain another viewport. For example, nested frames. Interface components created by the user agent such as prompts, menus, and alerts are not viewports.