Info and Relationships
Tier 1 · The normative floor
Baseline compliance
What the normative text of WCAG 2.2 requires, and nothing more. Only a failure of this tier is a WCAG failure.
The bare minimum
Information, structure and relationships conveyed through presentation can be programmatically determined, or are available in text. If something looks like a heading, list, table or group, that structure has to be available to software too.
Normative text
Verbatim from WCAG 2.2, W3C Recommendation 12 December 2024. Underlined terms are defined below.
Information, structure, and relationships conveyed through presentation can be programmatically determined or are available in text.
Not required by the normative text
Common claims that this criterion does not support. Don't log these as WCAG failures.
- Landmark regions or ARIA specifically. Structure can be conveyed by headings, lists, tables and other native semantics.
- Heading levels in strict sequence with no skips. A skipped level is only a problem if the coded levels misrepresent the visual structure.
- Exactly one h1 per page.
Definitions used (4)
Glossary definitions are normative. Their notes are informative.
- structure
-
- The way the parts of a web page are organized in relation to each other; and
- The way a collection of web pages is organized
- relationships
-
meaningful associations between distinct pieces of content
- presentation
-
rendering of the content in a form to be perceived by users
- programmatically determined
-
determined by software from author-supplied data provided in a way that different user agents, including assistive technologies, can extract and present this information to users in different modalities
Tier 2 · The gap
Usability & user impact
Where content can meet this criterion and still make things harder for people with disabilities. These are not failures of SC 1.3.1, so raise them as usability defects. Known failures, including failures of related criteria, are listed in Tier 1.
A page can convey its structure with the bare minimum of semantics and still be slow to navigate. Without landmarks or a sensible heading outline, screen reader users have fewer ways to jump around.
Tier 3 · The golden path
Recommended best practice
The pattern that meets the floor, closes the gap, and avoids audit disputes. A recommendation, not a requirement.
Use native HTML: headings that follow the visual hierarchy, real lists, tables with header cells, landmark elements, and fieldset with legend for groups of controls.
W3C's Understanding document and techniques for SC 1.3.1 ↗ are informative: sufficient techniques show ways to pass, and documented failures show common ways to fail, but neither changes what the criterion requires.
How SC 1.3.1 maps to the WCAG 3 draft
From this site's reviewed map to the WCAG 3 editor's draft. It's an interpretation: W3C has not published a mapping.
Successor provisions
Related, not a successor
From WCAG 2.2, section 5.1: “The main content of WCAG 2.2 is normative and defines requirements that impact conformance claims. Introductory material, appendices, sections marked as "non-normative", diagrams, examples, and notes are informative (non-normative). Non-normative material provides advisory information to help interpret the guidelines but does not create requirements that impact a conformance claim.”