The next standard we’ll explore in our series on understanding WCAG 2.0 is 2.4.5, Multiple Ways. This standard is required for WCAG level AA compliance, which is part of what Section 508 requires. Here’s the complete text:
2.4.5 Multiple Ways: More than one way is available to locate a Web page within a set of Web pages except where the Web Page is the result of, or a step in, a process. (Level AA)
At first glance, it might be surprising this is even an accessibility guideline. But the WCAG 2.0 guidelines are designed to help everyone use and navigate the web. And this guideline is all about helping people navigate the web.
There’s two pieces to this guideline. The first requires two different ways to get to a given page. That’s not a hard guideline to meet. The easiest way is to have each page linked to from another page as well as each page accessible from a search engine. That’s what we strive to do on the Lane site. Orphans, pages that aren’t linked at all, directly violate this guideline (though we’ll come back to them in a minute).
Another option is to use a site map. But be careful with this one. The SEO definition of a site map is something more akin to our sitemap XML files. But those pages aren’t accessible at all, nor even intended for humans to read. The WAI has a great example of a human accessible site map that does help to meet this guideline.
The second half of this guideline deals with an exception. There’s sometimes information that needs presenting as a result of a process, which isn’t appropriate for people to find any other way. For example, say there’s a confirmation page which appears after you register for a class. It isn’t really appropriate for this page to be found through search or even to be linked at all. It should only be seen in the context of successfully registering for a class.
A couple places you should look out for issues. If your server has a robots.txt file that prevents search engines from indexing pages, remember that search engines may not index your page, so beyond linking to your page, make sure you offer a second path (either a separate internal search engine, a site map, or one of these other techniques). Also be alert to pages that you might have excluded from your sitemap file (the SEO kind), since those pages are a lot less likely to show up in search. And watch out for pages behind authentication, as they’re usually not indexed by search engines, and due to permissions levels can be hard to integrate into site maps.
If you’d like to read more about the multiple ways guideline, you may also be interested in these techniques, which provides examples and more detail.
Interested in more? Check out the listing of all the posts in this series.