1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence (A)
Understanding 1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence (A)
When the order of content is important, the content order must be preserved no matter how it is presented to the user. This ensures that the order of content is meaningful whether someone is looking at it, listening to it with a screen reader, or has stripped out visual styling using a browser plugin.
Requirements / What to do?
- The visual order of content matches the underlying code order;
- Tabular data is presented using proper HTML markup (
<table>,<tr>,<th>, and<td>elements).
Common mistakes
- The DOM order does not match the visual order because CSS properties like flexbox and grid-layout have been used to alter the visual presentation;
- When CSS styles are disabled, the content order is meaningless;
- Tabular data is displayed using CSS to present the appearance of a table, but the proper HTML markup has not been used;
- The tabindex attribute has been used to force a tab order through the content.