Consistent control location
Normative Text
Where an interactive element with the same purpose is used across pages/views, its visual position in the layout is maintained.
Except when
- The location changes due to a page variation or viewport change, or
- The layout changes due to being part of a process (such as e-commerce checkout).
Methods & best practices
- Method: Establish a design system with documented rules for consistent placement of common interactive components (for example, navigation menus, search bars, and action buttons).
- Method: Reuse the same components across pages/views instead of recreating them.
- Best practice: If a visual position must change, document why and consider providing cues (for example, animations and labels) to reduce confusion.
Tests
This section is non-normative.
Procedure
For each interactive component in a set of pages/views:
- Check that components appear in the same relative visual position across pages/views, except when exceptions apply.
Expected results
- #1 is true.
Tests
This content needs to be written.
Key Terms
- accessibility support set
group of user agents and assistive technologies you test with
The AGWG is considering defining a default set of user agents and assistive technologies that they use when validating guidelines.
Accessibility support sets may vary based on language, region, or situation.
If you are not using the default accessibility set, the conformance report should indicate what set is being used.
- accessibility supported
available and working in the user agents and assistive technology in the accessibility support set
The working group intended to include a default accessibility support set. See Default accessibility support set #277.
- actively available
available for the user to perceive and use
- conformance scope
A set of Views and/or Pages selected to be part of a conformance claim. Where a View or Page is part of a Process, all the Views or Pages in the process must be included.
How a person or organization selects the set is not defined in WCAG3. There maybe informative guidance on selecting a suitable set in future (similar to WCAG-EM), but regional laws or regulations may provide a methodology.
- content
information, sensory experience and interactions conveyed
- interactive element
element that responds to user input and has a distinct programmatically determinable name
In contrast to non-interactive elements. For example, headings or paragraphs.
- non-interactive element
element that does not respond to user input and does not include sub-parts
If a paragraph included a link, the text either side of the link would be considered a static element, but not the paragraph as a whole.
Letters within text do not constitute a “smaller part”.
- page
non-embedded resource obtained from a single URI using HTTP plus any other resources that are used in the rendering or intended to be rendered together
Where a URI is available and represents a unique set of content, that would be the preferred conformance unit.
- platform
software, or collection of layers of software, that lies below the subject software and provides services to the subject software and that allows the subject software to be isolated from the hardware, drivers, and other software below
Platform software both makes it easier for subject software to run on different hardware, and provides the subject software with many services (e.g. functions, utilities, libraries) that make the subject software easier to write, keep updated, and work more uniformly with other subject software.
A particular software component might play the role of a platform in some situations and a client in others. For example a browser is a platform for the content of the page but it also relies on the operating system below it.
The platform is the context in which the conformance scope exists.
- process
series of views or pages associated with user actions, where actions required to complete an activity are performed, often in a certain order, regardless of the technologies used or whether it spans different sites or domains
- programmatically determinable
meaning of the content and all its important attributes can be determined by software functionality that is accessibility supported
- view
content that is actively available in a viewport including that which can be scrolled or panned to, and any additional content that is included by expansion while leaving the rest of the content in the viewport actively available
A modal dialog box would constitute a new view because the other content in the viewport is no longer actively available.
- viewport
object in which the platform presents content
The author has no control of the viewport and almost always has no idea what is presented in a viewport (e.g. what is on screen) because it is provided by the platform. On browsers the hardware platform is isolated from the content.
Content can be presented through one or more viewports. Viewports include windows, frames, loudspeakers, and virtual magnifying glasses. A viewport may contain another viewport. For example, nested frames. Interface components created by the user agent such as prompts, menus, and alerts are not viewports.