consistent-navigation-relative-order

Description

To improve accessibility, the order of items in a navigation menus should remain the same across webpages.

For instance, if a navigation menu on the homepage has ‘Item A’, ‘Item B’, and ‘Item C’ in that order, navigation menus on other pages on the same website should also have these items in the same order. Inconsistent order of items can make it difficult for users with low vision or cognitive disabilities to use the navigation menus.

When navigational items are repeated in the same order consistently, all users can easily navigate a website better.

Note that only the relative order of items are important. The following differences between navigational menu items on multiple pages of a website do not violate the consistent-navigation-relative-order rule:

• Adding a new menu item.
• Skipping a menu item.
• Inserting a sub menu.

Example

Consider the following example in which the order of items in the navigational menu is different in the homepage and the About page.

In contrast, the following sample fixes this issue as both the homepage and the About page have the items in the menu listed in the same order.

How to fix?

• Check if the items in navigational menus of a set of webpages are listed in the same relative order.
• If not, list the items in the same relative order.

Reference

• Technique G61
• WCAG 3.2.3: Consistent Navigation