G125Sufficient technique WCAG 2.4.5 Level AA Human testing required

Link related pages so content is findable

G125 is the plainest of the findability techniques. Link from a page to the pages related to it, so a reader who arrived at one has a route to the others without going back to a menu. Most sites already do some of this without thinking about it. W3C lists it as sufficient for 2.4.5 Multiple Ways at Level AA, and attaches a condition that changes what your page owes. It counts only when combined with other techniques. That condition is not bureaucratic. 2.4.5 asks for more than one way to locate a page, so no single technique on its list can satisfy it alone, and W3C marks every one of them the same way. The test is how many independent routes exist, not whether any particular one is present.

How we find it in an audit

Our reviewers count routes rather than checking a box. We take a handful of pages deep in the site and ask how many genuinely different ways a reader could have reached each one. Navigation, search, a site map, a table of contents, related links like these. One route is a finding, no matter how good that route is.

How affected users experience it

Screen reader users often arrive from search, in the middle of a site, with no sense of what surrounds them. A related links list at the foot of the article tells them what else exists and gives them somewhere to go that is not back to the top-level menu. People with cognitive disabilities benefit for a different reason. Following a link about the subject in front of them is easier than reconstructing a category tree.

Passes vs. fails

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

Passes

Each article ends with a 'Related guides' list, and the same articles are also reachable through site search and the site map.

Fails

An article is reachable only by descending a five-level category tree, and nothing else on the site links to it.

Other ways to satisfy this rule

8 guides on this site are filed under 2.4.5 Multiple Ways. W3C lists this one as sufficient for that rule when combined with other techniques, so the condition is part of the test rather than a footnote to it.

This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique G125: Providing links to navigate to related web pages. 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.