RE: APG Landmark Design Pattern Update and Questions related to Banner and Contenting landmarks

Birkir, Great explaination.

This also leaves mental space for important secondary elements that would never make into a ToC, e.g., breadcrumbs or a section of the page that contains controls and information related to pagination of a data table in the main content. Such elements are not important to a table of contents because they really do not contain contents from an information architecture perspective, which what a ToC is all about.

Matt


-----Original Message-----
From: Birkir Gunnarsson [mailto:birkir.gunnarsson@deque.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2016 11:32 AM
To: Matt King <a11ythinker@gmail.com>
Cc: tink@tink.uk; Richard Schwerdtfeger <richschwer@gmail.com>; Gunderson, Jon R <jongund@illinois.edu>; James Nurthen <james.nurthen@oracle.com>; public-aria@w3.org
Subject: Re: APG Landmark Design Pattern Update and Questions related to Banner and Contenting landmarks

The way I think of, use, and explain landmarks is that they are not descriptive of the page content, but of the page layout.
The intent is to communicate information that a sighted user gathers from looking at the page on the screen.
the user can see what content is displayed at the top of the screen, at the bottom, is indicated as the main content, in a left sidebar etc.
That is only vaguely related to the pages heading structure (main content is supposed to start with an h1, but it doesn't have to, and it is not always appropriate).
I think the heading structure is about the content and the hierarchy within the content whereas landmarks provide a non-visual "screen summary" of the page.
E.g. it is theoretically possible to present an entire book on a single page, especially for users who love scrolling.
In this scenario the heading structure provides the table of contents for the book:
The book title should be an h1,
individual chapter titles should be h2s etc.
But the entire book lives in a single landmark region, (assuming it is presented as the main content of the page, the banner of the page can be website information, the footer contains copyright and publisher info).

I have avoided the table of contents analogy for this reason.




On 2/10/16, Matt King <a11ythinker@gmail.com> wrote:
> Léonie, that is very interesting.
>
>
>
> I am not sure what it means though. It might simply mean that a lot of 
> people do not read the spec because the table of contents idea is 
> sprinkled throughout the spec and in a lot of articles on the topic.
>
>
>
> What I would like to better understand is how authors think about the 
> table of contents notion when they are told to use that as the base 
> concept for designing landmarks.
>
>
>
> In my experience, the table of contents concept often leads authors astray.
> There are two issues:
>
> 1.      It leads them to create too many landmarks.
>
> 2.      They omit sections that would be really useful as a landmark because
> they do not fit into the information architecture idea that 
> accompanies a table of contents.
>
>
>
> So, is it easier to overcome these 2 problems by supplementing the 
> “table of contents” concept or by simply leaving the “table of 
> contents” term out of the landmark notion? I don’t know. I have a 
> tendancy to think that people have such strong ideas about the table 
> of contents concept that it may be easier to get really good results by leaving that term off the table.
>
>
>
> Maybe the best thing to do is come up with some alternative wording 
> and then pole this group to see if it does a better job of hitting the mark.
>
>
>
> Matt
>
>
>
> From: Léonie Watson [mailto:tink@tink.uk]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2016 3:18 AM
> To: 'Richard Schwerdtfeger' <richschwer@gmail.com>; 'Gunderson, Jon R'
> <jongund@illinois.edu>
> Cc: 'Matt King' <a11ythinker@gmail.com>; 'James Nurthen'
> <james.nurthen@oracle.com>; public-aria@w3.org
> Subject: RE: APG Landmark Design Pattern Update and Questions related 
> to Banner and Contenting landmarks
>
>
>
> From: Richard Schwerdtfeger [mailto:richschwer@gmail.com]
> Sent: 09 February 2016 16:19
>
> On Feb 8, 2016, at 11:35 AM, Gunderson, Jon R <jongund@illinois.edu 
> <mailto:jongund@illinois.edu> > wrote:
>
>
>
> I am not sure why using the analogy of a “Table of Contents” is 
> getting so much resistance, since it is something that most people can understand and
> help people to understand what landmarks can do.   I think where the analogy
> brea
>
>
>
> ks down is that it is not useful when people get into sub sections, so 
> maybe there is a better way to describe the analogy as a “high level 
> table of contents of the content regions on the page”.
>
>
>
> I agree with Jon on this. It is a table of contents for the page. 
> People understand that. If landmarks are implemented correctly 
> (everything in a
> landmark) then you indeed can jump to all content sections of the page.
>
>
>
> I'm not so sure that's how people do think about landmarks. I did a 
> straw poll of people from the British Computer Association of the 
> Blind forum, Twitter and the A11ySlackers channel. I asked:
>
>
>
> Do you think of landmarks (banner, main, navigation etc.) as a table 
> of contents for the page (y/n)?
>
>
>
> Of the 34 people who have responded, 26 said no, 7 said yes, and 1 was 
> unsure. Not extensive research, but suggests we might want to think of 
> a better way to describe landmarks.
>
>
>
>
>
> Léonie.
>
>
>
> --
>
> @LeonieWatson tink.uk Carpe diem
>
>
>
>
>
>


--
Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Senior Accessibility Subject Matter Expert | Deque Systems
2121 Cooperative Way, Suite 210
Herndon, VA, 20171

Ph: (919) 607-27 53
Twitter: @birkir_gun

Received on Wednesday, 10 February 2016 20:41:13 UTC