Re: Using Heading to Replace Skip Links

Hi, Sailesh,

I think H42 and H69 are different techniques for different purposes.

H42 explicitly mentions "H1-H6", that is, "old" HTML<5-style of 
providing headings. In HTML5, even if you can use H1-H6, the 
recommendation will be to use only H1 within section elements; of 
course, we have to wait until "accessibility support" is enough to rely 
on this.

On the other hand, H69 explicitly says "provide headings at the 
beginning of EACH section". Main content is for sure a "section" of the 
document, so there must be a heading at the beginning of the main 
content and thus the main content is "reachable" through headings 
(typicall "skip to content" has exactly the same functionality).

Does H69 guarantee a proper structure (for 1.3.1)? Maybe not, because 
sections could still be wrongly nested.

Does H42 guarantee that the user can bypass repeated blocks of content 
(for SC 2.4.1)? Maybe, but what happens if the main content does not 
have a main heading? (H42 does not say that "headings are needed", it 
only says that H1-H6 can be used to identify [existing] headings).

Regards,
Ramón.

Sailesh wrote:

> Headings are meant to expose structure. That's what they do visually
> and allow screen reader users too to comprehend structure.
> Maybe jumping to an h1 (or h2) where such a tag is used consistently
> across pages on a site might help screen reader users (and say Opera
> users) navigate to main content. That is an alternative method and is
> perhaps incidental benefit of heading navigation. But every time one
> skips to an h1(or h2, etc.)  does not mean one is skipping repetitive
> blocks of content / navigation.
> I do not consider it is sufficient for SC 2.4.1 and had conveyed my
> objection on the technique to WCAG-WG too and suggested they merge it
> with H42 (headings technique) and convey that it is an incidental
> benefit of using headings.
 >
> Sailesh

Received on Friday, 11 May 2012 21:46:21 UTC