Providing page navigation in digital publications has many benefits. It allows users in mixed print-digital environments, such as schools, to easily coordinate locations (e.g., all students can reach the same page, regardless of whether they have the print or digital edition, when instructed by the teacher). It also has general benefits for digital-only publications, where users would otherwise be forced to use the same reading systems, often with the same text settings, to coordinate digital locations.
There are three key aspects to page navigation:
- Adding page break markers to the publication.
- Including a page list to allow users to access the page breaks.
- Identifying the source of the pagination when it comes from a statically paginated source.
Page break markers are special markup destinations in a digital publication. They provide assistive technologies information about the current page the user is on and also provide the link ends for a page list. For more information, refer to the knowledge base's Page Breaks page.
The page list provides essential information to reading systems to implement "go to page" functionality. It is a list of links to all the page break destinations in the digital publication. Users typically are not provided the entire list of pages to dig through, such as with the table of contents. For more information, refer to the knowledge base's Page List page.
Identifying the source of pagination is the final piece to providing page navigation. Users need to know what statically paginated source the page breaks and page list align to when deciding whether the pagination will be useful (e.g., does it match the physical textbook their classmates are using). The pagination source is provided in the metadata for the digital publication. For more information, refer to the knowledge base's Pagination Source page.
Not all of these aspects will be present in every digital publication with pagination. A publication might only have a page list, for example, and omit the page break markers, or a digital-only publication would not have a source for its pagination. In general, though, digital publications that provide page navigation for accessibility will include them all.