[Bug 25003] modify required heading mappings to reflect reality

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=25003

--- Comment #15 from Marco Zehe <mzehe@mozilla.com> ---
(In reply to James Craig from comment #12)
> My issue with this is mainly apathy. I don't think there is enough benefit
> to the outline depth computation of headings to warrant the implementation
> and subsequent author evangelism.

I totally agree with this. My principal view on this "beast" hasn't changed
since you, Steve, explained it to me one or two CSUNs back.

Moreover, on Windows, we have basically two ways of exposure of web content:
One, the more modern approach, is the exposure via accessibility APIs like
IAccessible2 (Firefox and somewhat Chrome) and UI Automation (IE 10 and above).
The other one is the exposure via what we call ISImpleDOM, which is the method
used by JAWS, Window-Eyes, and even NVDA in IE (all versions), and by JAWS and
WE at least in Firefox, and it basically means that screen readers do their own
HTML interpretation and only use MSAA as sort of a basic pointer mechanism.
While, in theory, the exposure could be governed by the browser through
mechanism one, and screen readers like NVDA, Orca, Firefox OS and Firefox for
Android, would immediately get it, everyone using method 2 would have to
implement the algorithm themselves to deal with the spec, and possibly spec
differences. If you want one possible result of this, install JAWS 13 or 14,
not 15, and test out your outline algorithm. Have fun with heading level 4711.
:-)
So in addition to evangelizing this monster to web developers, which would be
hard enough in itself, we'd have to explain a possible situation where the same
code gives totally different results in screen readers. An h2 within a section
is in scenario 1 turned into a heading 4711 correctly, whereas in scenario 2,
due to lack of implementation, it is still an h2.
And no, I don't think even aria-level will mittigate this situation, because
for that, the ARIA spec needs to be properly implemented, too.

> Only apply the outline depth to subsequent <h1> elements in a document. This
> way, the first <h1> is always level 1, and h2-h6 are unaffected. If an
> author wants to use the outline depth pattern, he can use <h1> for all
> heading, and all but the first would be  computed. If the author wants to
> intersperse headings of an explicit level, he can use h2-h6 unmodified, or
> h1 with an explicit aria-level value. This seems reasonably backwards
> compatible to me.

OK, my brain is already starting to form knots by just thinking about in how
many ways this whole thing will go wrong in the wild.

In my opinion, this outline algorithm idea has so many unanswered questions and
pitfalls that hardly any web developer will bother caring.

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Received on Tuesday, 22 April 2014 08:04:31 UTC