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
>
>
>
>
>
>


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Birkir R. Gunnarsson
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Received on Wednesday, 10 February 2016 19:32:02 UTC