Multiple ways to access a page
Silktide asks you to confirm that visitors have more than one way to find each page on your website, such as navigation menus, a search feature, or a site map. Whether the ways your site offers are sufficient is a judgment only a person can make.
Why this matters
Different people find pages in different ways. Someone with a cognitive impairment may find a site map easier than a deep menu; a user may prefer search to stepping through navigation; a visitor who lands mid-site from a search engine needs a way to orient themselves. If the only route to a page is one specific path through your navigation, everyone who cannot follow that path is locked out.
How to fix it
This check asks you to verify your website manually rather than reporting confirmed problems. Confirm that at least two of the following apply to each page:
- It is reachable from your site's navigation menus.
- Your site offers a search feature that can find it.
- It is listed on a site map or a table-of-contents page.
- It is linked from related pages, such as a list of all articles.
Pages that are a step in a linear process - such as the payment step of a checkout, or a page in a multi-page form - are exempt: they are meant to be reached only in sequence.
How Silktide tests this
- Raise every page for manual review. Silktide cannot automatically determine all the ways a page can be reached, so it does not attempt to score this criterion.
- You verify the routes to the page and mark the finding as checked.