nesting headers, title for AREA Re: FW: Comments on W3C WAI PA

In navigating a structural view as discussed by Jason, with reference to
proper nesting of Hx elements, the tree which would be navigated is a
semantic structure rather than that explicitly provided by the DOM (in the
case of HTML). This is in fact common practise in some User Agents, as
well as being analagous to the outline view provided by Microsoft Word.
Since there are very many structured documents on the web, or in the
process of being placed on the web, this is an important way to ensure
that they can be navigated sensibly.

The problem caused by an incorrect HTML implementation in IE should be
referred to in the techniques document, with appropriate kludges
demonstrated. However, I concur with Jason that it seems a fairly small
task to fix the bug in IE5 before release, and I would have expected
Microsoft to make such fixes in the ordinary course of events, or to make
them as a matter of demonstrating their real commitment to accessibility.
Given the amount of lead time I am somewhat surprised that this situation
has been allowed to develop, although that is water under the bridge now.

a trivial point. It is not necessarily inappropriate for other
organisations to produce modified versions of W3C recommendations. This
issue is treated in some depth in the W3C's process, copyright, and IPR
documents. In part it says that documents may be modified, provided
appropriate attribution is made, the W3C copyright statements are retained
with any such modified version, and it is made clear that the modified
version is not a W3C recommendation but a modified document which
incorporates material from W3C recommendation(s).


  On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, Charles Oppermann forwarded from Greg Lowney:
  
  > > A.1.3 Anything about the fact that you have to use TITLE on AREA to work
  > > with IE4 or IE5? It is very unfortunate, and really the fault of IE, but
  > > pages only using ALT as these guidelines recommend will not be accessible
  > > with IE, whereas if the page used both ALT and TITLE it would be
  > > accessible with all browsers. I recognize that that would be adding a hack
  > > to work around a flaw in a specific browser, so may not be appropriate,
  > > but certainly Microsoft's version of these guidelines would have to
  > > recommend authors use both.
On Tue, 9 Mar 1999, Jason White wrote:
  Such a change would be altogether unacceptable for the reason cited: its
  purpose would simply be to avoid a design flaw in a specific browser.
  Since version 5 has not been released yet, Microsoft still has time in
  which to correct the problem instead of trying to encourage authors to
  compensate for it; energies would be better directed toward fixing the
  design fault. Also, there should be no "Microsoft version" of these
  guidelines. They are a W3C document and, as such, intended to be
  definitive of a recommendation. It would be inappropriate for any
  organisation to produce modified versions.
  
  On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, Charles Oppermann forwarded from Greg Lowney:
  > > A.6.1 Using Hx tags correctly to convey structure is important, but
  > > nesting them correctly is not in my opinion. I'd say Pri 3. Can you
  > > justify why this is higher priority? 
On Tue, 9 Mar 1999, Jason White wrote:
  Certainly. If a user agent, such as a speaking web browser (via the DOM
  for instance) provides structural navigation of the document, then it
  becomes possible for the reader to traverse the tree structure directly in
  order to locate sections of interest. If headings are properly nested,
  then level n +1 headings will always appear below level n headings in the
  tree, thus providing the correct document structure for navigational
  purposes. It would thus be inappropriate at best, and confusing at worst,
  for, to take an example, a subsection heading to appear above a section
  heading in the hierarchy when structural navigation is being used.

Received on Monday, 8 March 1999 19:52:50 UTC