During every audit that I provide I find multiple links that lead to errors and I was surprised to find out that WCAG doesn’t have a general requirement saying that every link must lead to a working page. It made me think about the other things can make the web genuinely harder to use for people with disabilities, even when there isn’t one obvious WCAG success criterion to point to.
Here are 5 examples:
1️⃣ A search function that works, but is almost useless
You search for “renew passport” and get 47 results, with the first results that are old news articles, unrelated documents and pages with vague titles. For a screen reader user, going through those results can take considerably longer because they may need to listen to each result and inspect its context one by one. So the search technically works, but the effort required to find the right information is different.
2️⃣ A page with an enormous number of Tab stops
Imagine an online shop with filters, promotional banners, product cards, wishlist buttons, ratings, quantity controls and several other interactive elements. Everything is accessible, but there are more than 80 Tab stops before you reach the product you actually want. For someone who cannot use a mouse, it can mean a long sequence of repetitive physical actions just to get through the interface.
3️⃣ An accessible component repeated over and over
Imagine a course website with 40 accordion sections: each accordion is correctly implemented, keyboard accessible with visible focus. But a screen reader user looking for one small piece of information may have to navigate through dozens of almost identical sections to get there.
4️⃣ A process that is technically accessible, but unnecessarily complicated
Imagine booking a doctor’s appointment online. Instead of selecting a date and confirming the appointment, the user has to go through six screens, three confirmation dialogs and several steps where previously entered information has to be reviewed again. For someone with cognitive difficulties, fatigue or motor limitations, that complexity can make the task disproportionately difficult.
5️⃣ Information that exists, but is almost impossible to find
The website provides an alternative way to request a service, except the information is buried in a footer link called “Other information”, three pages deep, with no obvious connection to the service itself. A screen reader user may have to explore multiple pages or headings to discover it. Someone with cognitive difficulties may simply give up before finding it.
WCAG gives us a crucial baseline and yet something might clearly deserve our attention. The challenge is knowing when we’re looking at: an accessibility issue, a usability issue, a quality issue or a combination of them.
This is so valid - thanks for articulating so well and sharing it. Im just wondering how to practically log such issues as we usually do against an SC violation .