Guideline 13. Provide clear navigation mechanisms.

Checkpoint 13.8 - Place distinguishing information at the beginning of headings, paragraphs, lists, etc.

This guideline refers to the ‘inverted pyramid’ style of writing commonly used in journalism to provide the most relevant information to the top of a section followed by background information towards the end. This style facilitates people using screen readers who can read the header information or the first few lines and skip the paragraph if it is not relevant. It also facilitates cognitively impaired individuals who may find it difficult to read a large piece of text.

How do I do it?

Put the most important information first, with supplementary information towards the end of the page.

How do I check that it meets the WCAG criteria?

Each paragraph should be checked to verify if the first sentence summarises or give a succinct introduction to the paragraph which follows. Where this is the case in all paragraphs the page will be deemed to have passed. Where the index page has little text based information, the ‘about us’ page should be checked instead.

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