- From: John M Slatin <john_slatin@austin.utexas.edu>
- Date: Sun, 9 Oct 2005 13:59:49 -0500
- To: <public-wcag-teamb@w3.org>
Sorry to be chiming in so late with this. But I think the proposed definition of "section" is problematic. The proposal is to define a "section" as a "self-contained" part of an authored unit. I worry that, if taken literally, this would include every element in HTML that has an open and close tag. I know that's absurd, but <p>yatta yatta</p> is self-contained, and for that matter so is <a>link to something</a>. It may also be a problem that there's no such thing as a <section> element in HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.x. However, I'm not sure the definition is at the root of the problem. I think it might be the SC itself. In the SC we try to require a certain kind of treatment for "section titles," but then it turns out we were making very HTML-specific assumptions that depend on a loosely shared convention about what constitutes a "section" within an HTML document. What about something like the following for the SC itself? <proposed> Titles and headings are descriptive. </proposed> My thought in proposing this is that this SC is concerned only with the characteristics of the title or heading-- we don't really care whether it titles a delivery unit or a section within a text document. Where sections are concerned, all we can require is that *if* an author puts a heading on it, the heading should be descriptive. We may not like it if the author doesn't provide such titles, but I think that's a different issue. Also, if the above proposal is accepted, we won't need to tie ourselves in knots trying to define "section". <grin> Note: There is a <section> element in the proposed XHTML 2.0 specification: http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/mod-structural.html#sec_8.8. If the <section> element is used, then it has a child element called <h> which defines the logical structure. These can be nested. The old familiar <h1>...<h6> are also available in XHTML 2.0. There's potential for confusion here, and I think that makes a good argument for omitting the word "section" from the SC and adding the word "headings." John PS Sorry I didn't do this in the WIKI, but I wasn't able to get in this afternoon. "Good design is accessible design." Dr. John M. Slatin, Director Accessibility Institute University of Texas at Austin FAC 248C 1 University Station G9600 Austin, TX 78712 ph 512-495-4288, fax 512-495-4524 email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu Web http://www.utexas.edu/research/accessibility
Received on Sunday, 9 October 2005 18:59:53 UTC