Navigation labels –
- The label in your side navigation should describe and match up with the title of the page it’s linking to.
- The label in your side navigation should not have any acronyms or insider terms in it.
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See guidance on page titles for more information. |
July 30, 2019 |
July 30, 2019 |
| Clear navigation choices – your labels should be chosen so that there is always one clear choice for where something might be. |
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Don’t try to put everything one click away. Instead, focus on the most important things and organize the rest into choices that make sense at every step. |
July 30, 2019 |
July 30, 2019 |
| Number of items in a menu – your menu should not have more than seven items in it. |
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People have trouble picking from large lists of choices. Keep your list small and let them spend their energy on your content instead of on finding it. |
July 30, 2019 |
July 30, 2019 |
| Parent – Each page except the main landing page must have a parent page. |
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Example:
- When you set the parent of “Vision & Mission” to be “Strategic Plan”, the page creates the right URL https://www.bcit.ca/strategic-plan/vision-mission/. If you have an automatically generated menu, the parent will also determine where a page will show up.
For more information, see: KB#2900 – Creating a new page on the BCIT website with WordPress |
December 19, 2019 |
July 30, 2019 – Initial standard created
December 19, 2019 – added link to KB article |
| Page order – Organize your pages by setting the page order in a way that will make most sense to your visitors.
Page order incrementing – When setting page order, count up in 10s: 0, 10, 20, 30… This makes it easy to insert a page later without having to reorder the other pages. |
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Think through what order your visitors will want to tackle your pages in. Are they a series of steps, chronological or are some of them just more important? Make sure you’re setting the order in the page attributes (with 0 being the top choice and other numbers appearing in order).
If you have an automatically generated menu, the order will also determine where each page will show up. This will also be the order they appear in your pages listing in WordPress.
For more information, see: Creating a new page on the BCIT website with WordPress |
December 19, 2019 |
July 30, 2019 – initial standard created
August 16, 2019 – minor addition
December 19, 2019 – moved incrementing note to a full standard rather than a note |
| Link location – All links should open in the same window, except in those rare circumstances where doing so would substantively negatively impact the user experience. |
All links. |
This standard is a matter of both usability and accessibility. As such, the occasional exceptions also relate to usability and accessibility.
An example of a relevant exception would be a link to more information found within a fillable web form. Keeping the user’s information protected from accidental erasure is a more important usability concern in this case than the improved usability of permitting users to select for themselves where links open. |
July 30, 2019 |
July 10, 2019 – Initial standard created
July 30 – updated for scannability |
| PDF link text – Links to PDF files should be described as PDF files in the link text. |
All links to PDF files. |
This marking should be within the link text itself, so that users using screen readers get this information even when interacting with links separate from their surrounding context.
Example:
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July 30, 2019 |
July 10, 2019 – Initial standard created
July 30, 2019 – updated for scannability |
| Link text – All link text should clearly describe the content at the link’s destination. No generic link text such as “click here”, “more information”, “read more”, “check it out”, etc. Also, the target website address should never be used as the link text. |
All link text. |
This is an accessibility concern. Using the prohibited link text provides a very poor user experience for screen reader users. |
July 30, 2019 |
July 10, 2019 – Initial standard created
July 30 – updated for scannability |