# Understanding Bypass Blocks

## In brief

Goal
  Users can more easily navigate by keyboard.
What to do
  Provide a means of skipping repeating content.
Why it's important
  Users reliant on the keyboard interface can move around pages efficiently.

## Intent of Bypass Blocks

The intent of this Success Criterion is to allow people who navigate sequentially through content more direct access to the primary content of the Web page. Web pages and applications often have content that appears on other pages or screens. Examples of repeated blocks of content include but are not limited to navigation links, header content, and advertising frames. Small repeated sections such as individual words, phrases or single links are not considered blocks for the purposes of this provision.

Users who navigate sequentially through content will generally have to navigate through repeated content on each page. This is in contrast to a sighted user's ability to ignore the repeated material either by focusing on the center of the screen (where main content usually appears) or a mouse user's ability to select a link with a single mouse click rather than encountering every link or form control that comes before the item they want.

It is not the intent of this Success Criterion to require authors to provide methods that are redundant to functionality provided by the user agent. Most web browsers provide keyboard shortcuts to move the user focus to the top of the page, so if a set of navigation links is provided at the bottom of a web page providing a "skip" link may be unnecessary.

Although this Success Criterion deals with blocks of content that are repeated on multiple pages, we also strongly promote structural markup on individual pages as per Success Criteria 1.3.1.

Although the success criterion does not specifically use the term “within a set of web pages”, the concept of the pages belonging to a set is implied. An author would not be expected to avoid any possible duplication of content in any two pages that are not in some way related to each other, and are not "Web pages that share a common purpose and that are created by the same author, group or organization” (the definition of set of web pages).

Even for web pages that are not in a set, if a web page has blocks of text that are repeated within the page it may be helpful (but not required) to provide a means to skip over them.

## Benefits of Bypass Blocks

When this Success Criterion is not satisfied, it may be difficult for people with some disabilities to reach the main content of a Web page quickly and easily:

- Screen reader users who visit several pages on the same site can avoid having to hear all header content and dozens of navigation links on every page before the main content is spoken.
- People who use only the keyboard or a keyboard interface can reach content with fewer keystrokes. Otherwise, they might have to make dozens of keystrokes before reaching a link in the main content area. This can take a long time and may cause severe physical pain for some users.
- People who use screen magnifiers do not have to search through the same header content or other blocks of information to find where the main content begins each time they enter a new page.
- People with cognitive limitations as well as people who use screen readers may benefit when links are grouped into lists

## Examples of Bypass Blocks

- A news organization's home page contains a main story in the middle of the page, surrounded by many blocks and sidebars for advertising, searching, and other services. There is a link at the top of the page that jumps to the main story. Without using this link, a keyboard user needs to tab through approximately 40 links to reach the main story; the screen reader user has to listen to 200 words; and the screen magnifier user must search around for the location of the main body.
- An e-commerce website includes a long list of filters prior to the search results listing. A link above the list enables users to skip the filters and get to the product results quickly.

## Resources for Bypass Blocks

- WebAIM: Semantic Structure
- Heading Tags

## Techniques for Bypass Blocks

### Sufficient Techniques for Bypass Blocks

- Creating links to skip blocks of repeated material using one of the following techniques:

  - Adding a link at the top of each page that goes directly to the main content area
  - Adding a link at the beginning of a block of repeated content to go to the end of the block
  - Adding links at the top of the page to each area of the content

- Grouping blocks of repeated material in a way that can be skipped, using one of the following techniques:

  - Providing Heading elements at the beginning of each section of content
  - Using the `title` attribute of the `iframe` element
  - Using an expandable and collapsible menu

### Additional Techniques (Advisory) for Bypass Blocks

- Positioning content based on structural markup
- H97

### Failures for Bypass Blocks