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Understandable · Level A · 3.2.6

Consistent Help

If a site offers a help mechanism — a contact link, live chat, a help/FAQ page, a chatbot — on more than one page, it has to stay in the same relative location and order across those pages, so someone who found help once can find it again the same way everywhere else.

  • Blind
  • Motor
  • Cognitive
The problem, in practice — select the image to enlarge it
A three-page shop compared with help mechanisms that move around versus ones that stay in the same place. 'Inconsistent help' shows a 'Contact us' link tucked into the homepage content, a 'Visit our Help Center' link on the products page, and a 'Chat with us' link in the checkout flow, each in a different location and format, so users have to search for help on every page. 'Consistent help' shows the same three pages each with an identical Help / Contact us / Live chat row in the same footer position and order. A row of examples below contrasts help links scattered in different locations and formats across three pages against the same Help, Contact, and Live chat options appearing in the same order and place on every page.

How to recognize it

Compare the location of any help mechanism — a 'Contact us' link, a chat bubble, a help icon — across several pages of a site: help sitting in the header on one page and buried in the footer on another is the failure this targets, even though the help itself works fine wherever it is. This doesn't require a site to offer help at all — it only applies once a help mechanism already exists on more than one page — but if it does exist, it has to be predictable. People who struggle to relocate things — including people with cognitive or learning disabilities, and blind or motor-impaired users navigating sequentially who built up an expectation of where help sits relative to everything else — lose that shortcut every time it moves.

How to fix it

Place whichever help mechanisms a site offers — contact details, a chat widget, a help/FAQ link, a chatbot — in the same relative position across every page they appear on, the same underlying idea as 3.2.3 Consistent Navigation applied specifically to help. A user-initiated change, like the user themselves moving or collapsing a chat widget, doesn't violate this — the requirement is about the page's own default placement staying consistent, not about locking out user customization.

Example

Avoid

<!-- page A: help link in header -->
<header><a href="/help">Help</a></header>

<!-- page B: help link moved to footer -->
<footer><a href="/help">Help</a></footer>

Prefer

<!-- same relative position on every page -->
<footer><a href="/help">Help</a></footer>

Resources

  • 3.2.3 Consistent Navigation

    This criterion applies the same underlying idea — repeated components staying in the same relative order — specifically to help mechanisms (contact links, chat, FAQ). 3.2.3 covers the same requirement for a site's general navigation components.