Guideline 9:
Provide navigation mechanisms
Provide access to content through a variety of navigation mechanisms, including sequential navigation, direct navigation, searches, and structured navigation.
Users should be able to navigate to important pieces of content within a configurable view, identify the type of object they have navigated to, interact with that object easily (if it is an enabled element), and review the surrounding context (to orient themselves). Providing a variety of navigation and search mechanisms helps users with disabilities (and all users) access content more efficiently. Navigation and searching are particularly important to users with serial access to content or who navigate sequentially (by moving the focus).
Direct navigation (e.g., to a particular link or paragraph) is faster than sequential navigation, but generally requires familiarity with the content. Direct navigation is important to users with some physical disabilities (who may have little or no manual dexterity and/or increased tendency to push unwanted buttons or keys) and to users with visual disabilities. Expert users also benefit from direct navigation. Direct navigation may be possible with the pointing device or the keyboard (e.g., keyboard shortcuts).
Structured navigation mechanisms offer both context and speed. User agents should allow users to navigate to content known to be structurally important, such as blocks of content, headers and sections, tables, forms and form elements, enabled elements, navigation mechanisms, and containers. For information about programmatic access to document structure, see guideline 6.
User agents should allow users to configure navigation mechanisms (e.g., to allow navigation of links only, or links and headings, or tables and forms).
Checkpoints
9.1
[P1] | - Provide at least one content focus for each viewport (including frames) where enabled elements are part of the rendered content.
- Allow the user to make the content focus of each viewport the current focus.
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9.2
[P1] | - Provide a user interface focus.
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9.3
[P1] | - Allow the user to move the content focus to any enabled element in the viewport.
- Allow configuration so that the content focus of a viewport only changes on explicit user request.
- If the author has not specified a navigation order, allow at least forward sequential navigation, in document order, to each element in the set established by provision one of this checkpoint.
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9.4
[P1] | - For user agents that implement a viewport history mechanism, for each state in a viewport's browsing history, maintain information about the point of regard, content focus, and selection.
- When the user returns to any state in the viewport history (e.g., via the "back button"), restore the saved values for the point of regard, content focus, and selection.
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9.5
[P2] | - Allow configuration so that moving the content focus to or from an enabled element does not automatically activate any explicitly associated event handlers of any event type.
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9.6
[P2] | - For the element with content focus, make available the list of input device event types for which there are event handlers explicitly associated with the element.
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9.7
[P2] | - Extend the functionality required in provision three of checkpoint 9.3 by allowing the same sequential navigation in reverse document order.
- As part of satisfying provision one of this checkpoint, the user agent must not include disabled elements in the navigation order.
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9.8
[P2] | - Allow the user to search within rendered text content for a sequence of characters from the document character set.
- Allow the user to start a forward search (in document order) from any selected or focused location in content.
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When there is a match, do both of the following:
- move the viewport so that the matched text content is at least partially within it, and
- allow the user to search for the next instance of the text from the location of the match.
- Alert the user when there is no match or after the last match in content (i.e., prior to starting the search over from the beginning of content).
- Provide a case-insensitive search option for text in scripts (i.e., writing systems) where case is significant.
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9.9
[P2] | - Allow the user to navigate efficiently to and among important structural elements in rendered content.
- As part of satisfying provision one of this checkpoint, allow forward and backward sequential navigation.
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9.10
[P3] | - Allow configuration of the set of important elements and attributes identified for checkpoints 9.9 and 10.4.
- As part of satisfying provision one of this checkpoint, allow the user to include and exclude element types in the set.
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