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On a simple (static content only) website I want to add a page titled (translated) "Press articles". On this page all press (online or print) articles about the sites' organization are to be collected. The site navigation has two levels; this page is linked on level two (so no chance for submenu entries).

The solution has to be conforming to WCAG 2.0 AAA.

  • For print articles, a full article scan (PNG) will be provided.
  • For online articles, a link to the original source (if still available) will be provided.
  • The fulltext of all articles will be provided.
    • when graphics/photos are used, the images will be explained/described in great detail (more than only alt content).

How should I structure this page?

Adding all articles (each including scan/external link and fulltext) on the same page seems to be no good choice, because the page will get very long and because of all the images very big in file size, too.

I see two possible ways:

  • an internal link for each article, while each article opens in the "site chrome" with a "back to all press articles" link; the menu entry "Press articles" would still be highlighted
  • an internal link for each article, while each article opens in a "reduced" site design (only with site header and a link "back to all press articles") without any navigation/menu.

But I'm not very happy with either one. The first variant breaks with the site navigation, as usually each entry represents one page. The second variant breaks with the consistent site design expectation, as the site navigation is missing suddenly.

How to design pages that are not represented/linked in the site navigation but only in the content section of one page?

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  • Out of interest, what's the rationale behind showing a full page scan of a print article in addition to replicating the full article content in text? Why not just include the text version?
    – Matt Obee
    Nov 8, 2012 at 15:20
  • @Matt: Actually I didn't think about that way, because the requirement was to display scans of old print articles. Because of WCAG, I said that a text alternative is required. It may be possible to only display the alternative (and cut out images in the article scans). Would have to ask if the newspapers are okay with it.
    – unor
    Nov 9, 2012 at 1:08

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Of the two solutions you identified in your question, I would choose the first. It’s really not all that unusual (generally speaking) to display a page deep in a website’s structure without showing all levels of navigation above it. If you consider a product page that is reached by going through several parent category pages, the product page itself and its siblings are rarely represented in the menu and you will often only see the top level item selected in the menu and not the intermediate pages.

People can and will use their browser back button, and you could also include a "back to all press articles" link as a call to action, as you suggest. Does your site have a breadcrumb? That would of course help too.

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