What is Reading Order?
Reading order determines the order in which assistive technology will read content. Without correct reading order, users may end up very confused or get lost on the page. Setting the reading order:
- Allows text-to-speech or screen reading software to read information sequentially.
- Ensures that keyboard and screen reader users can navigate menus, links, and form fields items sequentially when using the tab key.
The following video shows what happens when reading order is incorrect on an article with three columns. The screen reader in this video reads the top line of each column instead of going down the first column.