Never identify content by shape or location alone
F14 is a documented failure under the sensory characteristics rule. It is the click-the-button-on-the-right technique, and it is a defect wherever it turns up. The rule turns on one word. Instructions must not rely solely on shape, color, size, position, orientation or sound, so position offered alongside a name is fine. The Account settings menu, on the right, passes. The menu on the right does not. There is a second reason this fails that has nothing to do with disability, and it is the one that convinces people fastest. Layout is not stable. Position changes with font size, window width and screen size, so the menu on the right is at the bottom on a phone and somewhere else again at 400% zoom. The plainest repair for a stranded reference is also the published one. Give the thing a heading, then refer to it by that.
How we find it in an audit
We search the content for the vocabulary first. Right, left, above, below, the round button, the green box, the icon in the corner. Every hit gets read in context to see whether the instruction still works with position taken away. A tool can produce the word list. Deciding whether below is an instruction or a description is reading, and that is where most of the false positives die. Then we look at the same page at 400% zoom and on a narrow screen, because that is where the references stop being true for everybody.
How affected users experience it
A screen reader user has no right side of the page. Content arrives in order, one thing after another, and the geometry the instruction depends on is not part of what they receive. So use the menu on the right becomes a search of the whole page for something that might be a menu. Somebody with low vision has a version of the same problem, because their right side is not your right side. And a sighted reader on a phone is looking at a single column, where nothing is on the right at all.
Passes vs. fails
Passes
<p>Use the "Account settings" menu to manage your account.</p>
<!-- Position is fine as a second cue: -->
<p>Use the "Account settings" menu (on the right) to manage your account.</p>Fails
<p>Use the menu on the right to manage your account.</p>How this gets tested
The W3C publishes test rules that define what a checker looks for here.
- Content has alternative for visual referenceA tool finds candidates, you decide
The other techniques filed under this rule
3 guides on this site are filed under 1.3.3 Sensory Characteristics. W3C documents this one as a failure of that rule, so it describes a way the rule gets broken rather than a way to pass it.
This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique F14: Failure of Success Criterion 1.3.3 due to identifying content only by its shape or location. W3C publishes its techniques as guidance rather than as the standard, and says so on every one of them. The success criterion is what conformance is measured against, and a technique is one documented way to meet it.