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nhsuk / nhsuk-service-manual

Design and build digital services for the NHS. Use the service manual to build consistent, usable services that put people first.​ Learn from the research and experience of other NHS teams.
https://service-manual.nhs.uk
MIT License
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Update back link position guidance (from bottom to top) #2034

Closed frankieroberto closed 2 months ago

frankieroberto commented 2 months ago

This updates the back link guidance to recommend that generally the back link should appear at the top-left of the page, which is what the majority of services seem to do.

It also explicitly says that it should appear before the <main> tag in the HTML so that the skip link will skip past it.

Previously the guidance here suggested that some services included the back link at the bottom of the content. However both of the services mentioned (111 online and [Choose if data from your health records is shared for research and planning](https://your-data-matters.service.nhs.uk/)) seem to have since moved their back link to the top-left.

The current rationale for having the back link at the bottom is:

That's because we don't want to suggest to people who use a screen reader that they leave the page prematurely.

However, possibly making sure that the back link is skippable using the skip link is enough to mitigate this?

The current guidance is also contradicted by the page template guidance which suggests putting back links in the outerContent at the top of the page.

The GOV.UK Design System back link has similar guidance:

Always place back links at the top of a page, before the <main> element. Placing them here means that the ‘Skip to main content’ link allows the user to skip all navigation links, including the back link.

Checklist

frankieroberto commented 2 months ago

@anandamaryon1 @sarawilcox this one isn’t dependent on the upcoming NHS.UK Frontend release, however I think it’s worth it going out before or at at same time as that, given it will also mention the back link?

frankieroberto commented 2 months ago

@sarawilcox @anandamaryon1 @edwardhorsford thanks for the comments (and thanks Sara for spotting the paragraph in the research section! 😊).

I think this is good to be merged now? Although not sure whether you want it merged into main or the release branch?