Structure your website so that your content is presented in a logical order.
What to do?
- Structure your website’s content so that it reads in a logical order
- Test your website with a screen reader (or without CSS enabled) to make sure itsreading order is presented correctly
Resources
Plain English Explanation
All we’re doing here is making sure that our website presents content in a sensical order to screen readers. If you structure your website correctly under 1.3.1, this will probably be taken care of.
Where you might run into trouble is if your website has a unique layout (e.g. main content in center with a sidebar on the left and right) or multiple columns of content.
The best way to present content is in the order that most people would naturally read it – from top to bottom and left to right.
Basic example
1. Header
2. Main Content 3. Sidebar
4. Footer
The browser extension in the resources section will enable you to view your website without CSS enabled.
CSS is a language that styles the appearance/design of websites.
The effect is you can compare your website as it shows normally (with styling) and without so you can see if there are any differences in the visual presentation vs. the order in which a screen reader will read the page.
There can be more than one correct reading order. The key is that your website reads in a logical, sensical order.
