# Understanding Consistent Navigation

## 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.

## 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

- 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 of Consistent Navigation

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 Web site. 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.

## Resources for Consistent Navigation

- Detweiler, M.C. and Omanson, R.C. (1996), Ameritech Web Page User Interface Standards and Design Guidelines.
- IBM: User experience design - Navigation.

## Techniques for Consistent Navigation

### Sufficient Techniques for Consistent Navigation

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

### Additional Techniques (Advisory) for Consistent Navigation

### Failures for Consistent Navigation

- Failure of 3.2.3 due to presenting navigation links in a different relative order on different pages