Accessible navigation means the menus, links and search on a site are built so that everyone can use them, no matter how they browse. That includes people moving through the page with a keyboard, visitors using a screen reader, and anyone on a small touch screen.
Picture a supermarket with clear aisle signs and a wide path to the checkout. A sighted shopper reads the signs, but a blind shopper following the wall still needs the route to make sense by touch. Web navigation works the same way: it has to be logical when read aloud, reachable by keyboard, and obvious about which item is currently selected. A common pattern is a ‘skip to content’ link and a hamburger menu that opens with the Enter key, not only on hover. This is a core part of broader accessibility work.
The underlying rules come from the WCAG standard, which asks for visible focus states and a sensible reading order. But the test is simple. Can you reach every page using only your keyboard?
A few details make or break it in practice. The order in which items receive focus should match the order they appear on screen, or a screen reader user gets a jumbled tour. A dropdown that traps focus, so Tab never escapes it, can lock someone out of the rest of the page entirely. And the focus outline that browsers add by default should be styled, not stripped, because removing it leaves keyboard users with no idea where they are.
At TopDevs we check every menu with the mouse unplugged before launch, so the route through a client site holds up for visitors who navigate by keyboard or voice.
