G123Sufficient technique WCAG 2.4.1 Level A Partly scanner-detectable

Add skip links past repeated content blocks

Every page on a site tends to open with the same material, and every keyboard user walks through it before reaching what they came for. G123 puts a link at the start of that block, or directly before it, that sends the reader to the content immediately after. Where a page has several such blocks, the reader hops from one skip link to the next. W3C lists this as sufficient for 2.4.1 Bypass Blocks at Level A, on the condition that it is genuinely used to skip repeated material rather than as ordinary in-page navigation. Links are one of two routes W3C accepts. The other is to group the repeated blocks so assistive technology can skip them structurally, using landmarks and headings, and a site can meet 2.4.1 that way instead. One detail decides whether a skip link works at all. Activating it has to move keyboard focus, not just the scroll position, or the next Tab press drops the reader back into the menu they escaped.

How we find it in an audit

A scanner can confirm a skip link exists in the markup. That is the easy half. Our reviewers then use it with the keyboard, because the common failures all hide behind a correct-looking link. It scrolls without moving focus. It is hidden so thoroughly it never appears when focused. Or its target is not focusable, so focus lands nowhere.

How affected users experience it

A sixty-link mega menu is roughly sixty Tab presses, on every page, before the content starts. Screen reader users have their own ways around it, jumping by heading or by landmark. Keyboard-only users without a screen reader have none of that and depend entirely on the skip link. For someone using a switch device, where each press is deliberate effort, one press against sixty is the difference between using the site and abandoning it.

Passes vs. fails

Passes: one jump past the header. Fails: tab through everything, every page.

Passes

The block starts with a 'Skip navigation' link that becomes visible on focus and moves keyboard focus to the first element after the menu.

Fails

Every page opens with the same 60-link mega menu, and reaching the article means tabbing through all of it, every time.

How this gets tested

The W3C publishes test rules that define what a checker looks for here.

Bypass Blocks of Repeated ContentA tool finds candidates, you decide
Document has heading for non-repeated contentNothing implements this yet
Document has a landmark with non-repeated contentA tool can check this
Block of repeated content is collapsibleNothing implements this yet
Document has an instrument to move focus to non-repeated contentNothing implements this yet

Other ways to satisfy this rule

10 guides on this site are filed under 2.4.1 Bypass Blocks. W3C lists this one as sufficient for that rule when used for creating links to skip blocks of repeated material, so the condition is part of the test rather than a footnote to it.

This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique G123: Adding a link at the beginning of a block of repeated content to go to the end of the block. 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.