G65Sufficient technique WCAG 2.4.8 Level AAA Not graded

Show a breadcrumb trail on deep pages

Home, then Jewelry, then Rings, then the ring itself, each step a link. A breadcrumb trail says where a page sits inside the site and gives a route back up it. G65 is that technique, and W3C files it as sufficient for its location rule, the Level AAA criterion about telling readers where they are within a set of pages. Level AAA sits above the AA line accessibility law generally points at, so read a breadcrumb as a strong improvement rather than an obligation you are carrying. It earns its place regardless, because most visitors do not arrive at your homepage. They land deep, from a search result, with no idea what sits above them.

How we find it in an audit

Deep pages get looked at first, since that is where a trail is worth anything at all. A reviewer confirms the trail follows the actual structure rather than the visitor's click history, that every step above the current page is a link, and that the current page is marked as current instead of linking to itself. Product pages, articles and documentation are the usual candidates. Where a trail is generated from browsing history, we flag it, because a trail that changes depending on how you arrived is not telling anybody where they are.

How affected users experience it

Landing on a deep page from a search result, a screen-reader user has that page and nothing else. A breadcrumb read out near the top hands them the whole context in one line. Jewelry, then Rings, and now this ring. Without it, working out which section they are in means exploring the navigation, which costs several minutes to answer a question a sighted visitor answers at a glance. Marking the current step with aria-current is what stops the last item reading as one more link to somewhere new.

Passes vs. fails

Passes: headings exist in the code. Fails: one flat wall of text.

Passes

Home, Jewelry, Rings, Gold twist ring, with every level above it linked and the current page marked using aria-current.

Fails

A product page reached from a search result gives no signal of where it sits in the catalog, and offers one Back button.

Other ways to satisfy this rule

7 guides on this site are filed under 2.4.8 Location. W3C lists this one as sufficient for that rule on its own. Implement it correctly, in a way your readers' software actually supports, and the rule is met.

This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique G65: Providing a breadcrumb trail. 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.