Consistent navigation order

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.

Supplemental requirement

Intent

The intent of this success criterion is to encourage the use of consistent visual layout and source order 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.

Likewise, users who are blind and navigate through content on pages sequentially benefit from having navigational mechanisms occur in a consistent order relative to the overall source order and structure of the page.

It is important to note that the use of the phrase “same order” in this section is not meant to imply that sub-navigation 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 website. 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.

Tests

Consistent main navigation relative order

Procedure

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

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

Expected results

• #1 is true.