Hey everybody. Josh here with Online ADA. In this video, we’re covering 3.2.4–Consistent Identification, which is a level AA requirement.
I’ll read the description. It says, “components that have the same functionality within a set of web pages are identified consistently.” So, this is specifically pertaining to elements that are repeated, okay, throughout your site.
Um, if you have multiple icons on one page and they serve different functions–this isn’t referring to that. It’s specifically, uh, if you have, for instance, maybe a search input in your footer, something that is repeated on every page, and a button for submitting the search. On one page maybe it says “submit,” on another page it says “search,” or another page that says “find,” or something. That’s not consistent. That would be breaking this accessibility guideline. We wanna make sure that the identification for that icon is going to be consistent and the same because it serves the same purpose.
Similarly, if you have check marks or check boxes, uh, across one form and then on another page, you have another form that has check boxes–if they’re serving the same purpose, then they are labeled consistently. If they, however, serve different purposes, for instance, if in one form the checkbox indicates that something is approved and then on the other form, the checkbox indicates that something is included, like a file or something, then that would be different functionality, and exempt from this rule because it is not, uh–it doesn’t need to be consistent. They’re not the same functionality.
Another really good example of this is if you have pagination on your site. Um, on blog articles, especially, this comes in handy, you’ll see, um, a lot of times a blog article with the title, the featured image, and the content, maybe like the author stuff at the bottom. At the top, you’ll have, “go to previous article,” and “go to next article,” right? So if those change from page to page, that would be an example of inconsistent labeling. If it said, “go to next page” or just said “next” and on the next page it said “go to something else,” that would be inconsistent because one time it said “next,” one time it said “go to blank.”
If, however, you’re viewing them all on the same page and you have pagination with, uh, like a previous arrow and a forward and then you’ve got the different buttons down, uh, arrayed in between those arrows–if the next button said–if you’re on page five and the next button says “go to page six,” then you go to page six and then that button says “go to page seven,” that is consistent labeling because even though they’re not identical–keyword–similar, they are consistent. You don’t want them to be identical, necessarily. They don’t have to be. They need to be consistent. They need to reflect the same functionality in each place they’re identified.
If you have a “download” button, uh, some place on your site or even like a “print” button and the icon is like a cloud with a down arrow or something–I see that a lot– you would have the button, “download or print X.” So in this case, it’s for printing this article. Go to a new, uh, new page, now it’s for printing THIS article. “Print / the name of the article” is consistent, even though the article name changes each time, it still is labeled, firstly, with “print.” You don’t have a bunch of other extra, extraneous text, um–that’s consistency. Okay? Hopefully that’s clear.
Thank you for joining me in this video and I’ll see you in the next video.