Re: hgroup and ARIA outline in ISSUE-129 [Was: SSUE-129: replace or modify the ARIA section of the HTML5 spec - chnage proposal and replacement spec text]

On Sun, 28 Nov 2010 20:34:37 +0800, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis  
<bhawkeslewis@googlemail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 11:47 AM, Steve Faulkner
> <faulkner.steve@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I am not proposing that hgroup is ignored, I am suggesting that in the
>> context of a user of AT moving through page content, as against  
>> accessing
>> and naviagting via a page outline, the presence of the hgroup as a  
>> heading
>> does not make sense.
>
> These are certainly different scenarios, but ARIA/accessibility API
> mappings might be used for both these scenarios.

The complexity is that the outlining algorithm and the "normal" browser  
view are different.

<hgroup>
<h1>Acme Widgets PLC</h1>
<h2>The finest Widgets that wonga can buy</h2>
</hgroup>

has 2 headings in "normal" full page view - the h1 and the h2. It doesn't  
make sense for hgroup to also be a heading.

The code above, however, has only one heading ("Acme Widgets") for the  
purposes of constructing an outline; the <h2> is removed from the document  
outline as the outlining algorithm requires. But is still makes no sense  
to me for the <hgroup> to have any ARIA/Accessibility API mapping. It does  
nothing in itself, it just tweaks the semantics of its contents in one  
specific circumstance - the "outline view".

(I have considerable misgivings about <hgroup> anyway; as I speak at  
events etc, everyone finds the concept hard to grasp. I wonder whether the  
presence of two or more headings h1 ... h6 within one single <header>  
isn't enough to make the outlining algorithm to magically ignore the  
lower-hierarchy Hx elements without needing another element to do it)

bruce

Received on Sunday, 28 November 2010 22:42:21 UTC