design-reviews#1253: Other Spec Review: CSS navigation-based styling

Opened

Aug 4, 2026

Specification

https://drafts.csswg.org/css-navigation-1

Explainer

https://github.com/WICG/declarative-partial-updates/blob/main/route-matching-explainer.md

Links

Previous early design review, if any: https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/####
An introduction to the feature, aimed at unfamiliar audiences: https://github.com/WICG/declarative-partial-updates/blob/main/route-matching-explainer.md
A description of the problems that end-users were facing before this proposal: https://github.com/WICG/declarative-partial-updates/blob/main/route-matching-explainer.md#motivation-and-use-cases
Alternatives considered: https://github.com/WICG/declarative-partial-updates/blob/main/route-matching-explainer.md#alternatives-considered
Examples of how to use the proposal to solve the end-users' problems: https://
What do the end-users experience with this proposal: https://
User research you did to validate the problem and/or design, if any: https://

The specification

Follows the Web Platform Design Principles.
Includes Security and Privacy Considerations sections based on answers to the Security/Privacy Questionnaire.

Where and by whom is the work is being done?

GitHub repo:https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/i
Primary contacts: Noam Rosenthal (@noamr), Bramus Van Damme (@bramus), David Baron (@dbaron) (Google)
Organization/project driving the specification: Google
This work is being funded by: Google
Primary standards group developing this feature: CSSWG
Group intended to standardize this work:
Incubation and standards groups that have discussed the design: https://github.com/WICG/declarative-partial-updates

Feedback so far

Multi-stakeholder feedback:
- Chromium comments: Implementing
- Mozilla comments: TBD
- WebKit comments: TBD
Major unresolved issues with or opposition to this specification:
Status/issue trackers for implementations: https://chromestatus.com/feature/4771962874363904

You should also know that...

No response

Track conversations at https://tag-github-bot.w3.org/gh/w3ctag/design-reviews/1253

Comment by @matatk Aug 12, 2026 (See Github)

Hi @noamr, thank you for the review request. I note the mention of accessible alternatives in the draft note in the spec. There isn't an 'accessibility considerations' section in the explainer or spec, though. Could you let us know your thoughts on accessibility? (If you could add such a section to the spec, or explainer, that'd be great.)

Comment by @noamr Aug 13, 2026 (See Github)

Hi @noamr, thank you for the review request. I note the mention of accessible alternatives in the draft note in the spec. There isn't an 'accessibility considerations' section in the explainer or spec, though. Could you let us know your thoughts on accessibility? (If you could add such a section to the spec, or explainer, that'd be great.)

Added: https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/1253#issuecomment-5270550370

This spec is adjacent to a few a11y features/considerations such as indicating the "current link" with aria-current, or indicating "loading" with aria-busy, but we don't see atm how these should impact the spec, if at all.

If TAG or anyone else thinks that there is some oversight around a11y, we'd love to hear!

#1253: Other Spec Review: CSS navigation-based styling