Location
A reader has to be able to work out where they are inside a set of pages. Breadcrumbs are the obvious answer and they are not the only one. W3C lists five routes, and the lightest is plain links up the hierarchy, which is what its own first example does. Note the scope. A set of pages means pages sharing a purpose and an author, so a checkout flow that drops the site navigation is a different set from the product pages it came from, and a different language version is a different set again.
Why it matters
Arriving from a search result drops somebody into the middle of a structure they have never seen. Without a location cue they cannot tell whether a parent page, a sibling page or anything else useful sits nearby. W3C names that case and pairs it with a second one. Somebody with a short attention span gets lost after a long series of navigation steps and needs to see where those steps landed them. The other half of the stated intent is commercial. Location information is also how a reader finds the related pages you would like them to find.
Who this rule protects
People with cognitive disabilities are the group W3C names, along with anybody who followed a link straight into a deep page and now needs to work out where they are.
How to check it yourself
- Land on a deep page directly, the way a search visitor would, and ask where you are.
- Look for breadcrumbs, a site map, links up the hierarchy, or a marked current item in the navigation. Any one of those satisfies the rule.
- Check that the current item is marked in code with aria-current, not only in color, which a screen reader cannot see.
- Check your long PDFs for running headers and consistent page numbers.
Failures we see most often
- A deep site offers nothing anywhere that says where a page sits.
- The current navigation item is styled differently with no aria-current behind it.
- Breadcrumbs show a category the page does not actually sit in, so the information that is available is wrong.
Who this one is for
Read from this rule's own note above, so the grouping and the note cannot disagree.
- Cognitive and learningpeople for whom the difficulty is understanding, remembering, or staying with it
How to fix it
- Add breadcrumbs below the top level, or plain links up the hierarchy if a breadcrumb component is more than you need.
- Mark the current item with aria-current="page", which meets this rule and helps you at Level A too.
- Keep the trail truthful to the real structure of the site.
Step-by-step fix guides (7)
- ARIA26: Mark the current page with aria-current
- G63: Offer a site map as another route
- G65: Show a breadcrumb trail on deep pages
- G127: Show each page's place in its collection
- G128: Show current location inside navigation bars
- PDF14: Add running headers and footers to long PDFsAdvisory
- PDF17: Make PDF page numbers match the printed pages
Passes vs. fails
Passes
Home / Kitchen / Kettles / Cordless kettle sits at the top, and the nav item carries aria-current.
Fails
A product page offers no path back to its category anywhere on the page.
In audits and lawsuits
This is Level AAA and one of the cheapest to meet, partly because the bar is availability rather than a particular component. The same attribute that satisfies it is also sufficient for criterion 1.3.1 at Level A, which is in scope for every audit we sell. That is aria-current on the item you are already styling as current. PDFs count here too. Running headers and consistent page numbering are the documented routes for a long document.