Understanding Consistent Navigation

Intent of Consistent Navigation

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 of Consistent Navigation

Examples of Consistent Navigation

Resources for Consistent Navigation

Techniques for Consistent Navigation

Sufficient Techniques for Consistent Navigation

  1. Presenting repeated components in the same relative order each time they appear

Additional Techniques (Advisory) for Consistent Navigation

Failures for Consistent Navigation