Understanding WCAG SC 3.2.3 Consistent Navigation
3.2.3 Consistent Navigation: Navigational mechanisms that are repeated on multiple Web pages within a set of Web pages occur in the same relative order each time they are repeated, unless a change is initiated by the user. (Level AA)
This success criterion requires that the commonly repeated navigation related user interface elements like skip to main content link, primary secondary navigation links, logo, search element etc must be placed at the same locations where they occur on each page they are repeated. The placement of these user interface components is very important as people with disabilities heavily rely on common components for quick navigation. Users with cognitive & intellectual disabilities, users who use screen magnification technology & text to speech software’s must be able to predict the existence of the common components. For example, if a few pages contains, a search element is placed on the top right and in other pages, the search component is not placed in the same location, this will fail this Success Criterion.
Providing consistent navigation does restrict content authors or developers from adding secondary navigation or additional components into the layout of the page. For example, a navigational menu might have sub menus that are exposed when the user is on that particular navigational menu. But here the order must not change the order of the navigation menu while the submenus are added in between them. Focus of the keyboard/assistive aid user must go to each menu during navigation.