RE: Validity constraints on <section>

Robin Berjon wrote:
"So far the only negative feedback we've received is that in books or papers
it is common to have something that is logically a section not have a title,
for instance a dedication or an abstract.

While that's a valid concern, I tend to think that from an a11y it's pretty
unhelpful. Such section are visually distinguished (say with page breaks or
italics) but without the visual queues you have to read them to know what
they are.

Chatting with Steve, we wonder if the rule shouldn't be: a section must have
either a heading, or aria-label(ledby)."

Yes, that would seem to solve the problem, as well as the use case outlined
above.

Reading through the current definition of section again, I notice that the
following text gives "contact information" as a possible use for section:

"Examples of sections would be chapters, the various tabbed pages in a
tabbed dialog box, or the numbered sections of a thesis. A Web site's home
page could
be split into sections for an introduction, news items, and contact
information."
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/sections.html#the-section-eleme
nt

I wonder if that's adding to the confusion (albeit in a very small way)?
Wouldn't the address element be better for contact information?

"The address element represents the contact information for its nearest
article or body element ancestor."
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/sections.html#the-address-eleme
nt


Léonie.

-----Original Message-----
From: Robin Berjon [mailto:robin@w3.org] 
Sent: 21 March 2013 14:39
To: tink@tink.co.uk
Cc: 'HTML WG'
Subject: Re: Validity constraints on <section>

On 21/03/2013 15:15 , Léonie Watson wrote:
> The lockerz.com homepage has 108 regions (screen readers use the 
> region role mapping to report section elements). That's 216 
> announcements on a single page.

Actually I'm counting 149 :)

> One example on the lockerz.com homepage causes my screen reader to 
> announce the following:
>
> "Region"
> "Region"
> "Region"
> "Region"
> "Region"
> "Region"
> "Link graphic W310/image0013620927118302ukw51"
> "Region end"
> "Region"

Yes, that's exactly the problem I was thinking of.

So far the only negative feedback we've received is that in books or papers
it is common to have something that is logically a section not have a title,
for instance a dedication or an abstract.

While that's a valid concern, I tend to think that from an a11y it's pretty
unhelpful. Such section are visually distinguished (say with page breaks or
italics) but without the visual queues you have to read them to know what
they are.

Chatting with Steve, we wonder if the rule shouldn't be: a section must have
either a heading, or aria-label(ledby).

--
Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/ - @robinberjon

Received on Thursday, 21 March 2013 15:10:56 UTC