• Success Criterion 2.4.5
  • Conformance level AA

Sequential-Only Article Pagination With No Table of Contents

2.4.5 — Multiple Ways

Scenario

Setting

A video streaming service's show detail page

What’s wrong

Sequential-only flows applied to non-process pages (forcing paging through articles with no TOC/search).

Example 

<article>
  <h1>Season 3 Recap, Page 1 of 10</h1>
  <p>...episode 1 summary...</p>
  <a href="/recap/season3/page2">Next</a>
</article>
<!-- no table of contents, no episode index, no search across the ten pages -->

Why it matters

A viewer wanting episode 8's summary must click Next seven times through unrelated episodes to reach it.

How to test

Try to jump ahead in a paginated set of non-process content (e.g., articles): if sequential paging is the only option with no table of contents or search, it fails.

How to fix

Reserve forced-sequential flows for genuine processes like checkout; give reference content a table of contents or search instead.

<nav aria-label="Season 3 recap episodes">
  <a href="/recap/season3/page1">Episode 1</a>
  <a href="/recap/season3/page8">Episode 8</a>
</nav>

Outcome

A viewer jumps straight to episode 8's recap instead of paging through seven others first.

Who is affected

Users with motor or cognitive disabilities pay a high cost navigating content that isn't actually sequential in nature.

Learn more

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