Re: HTML 5 Authoring Guidelines Proposal the use of the section element and its potential impact on screen reader users

On Nov 28, 2007, at 12:54, Dr. Olaf Hoffmann wrote:

> But if a reader has a method to 'style' audible a difference between  
> h1 and h2, it should be possible to count headings outside sections  
> and
> sections nested in each other with heading to derive the numbering  
> as specified in the working draft. Then it is the same problem as
> to style h1 and h2 differently in an aural stylesheet. If the  
> document only uses section structures and no h2...h6,
> I think, it is simple to create a default aural CSS stylesheet. But  
> if both systems are mixed, indeed, this gets more difficult,
> but as far as I can see (from an author point of view) not impossible.

It seems to me that the usefulness of the proposed outline depends  
largely on whether there will be a companion CSS selector for matching  
an element by its outline depth. A new selector like that should  
cascade reasonably with legacy styles written for h1-h6 or h1/section.  
I don't know if that's even possible. Moreover, it isn't clear whether  
it is performance-wise feasible for selectors to depend on the outline  
algorithm when there are dynamic DOM changes.

See also
http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2007-February/009553.html

> From this point of view of course it would be simpler for
> implementors to separate the two methods either using
> section+h or using h1-h6. Separation of different functionalities
> is mostly a good idea to avoid more difficulties as necessary.

What should happen when the UA gets a mix anyway?

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Wednesday, 28 November 2007 13:02:53 UTC