RE: GL 3.1 L3 SC4 (Section titles)

If we want to adopt John's proposed change to the success criteria,
should we take this proposal to the larger group?

Loretta Guarino Reid
lguarino@adobe.com
Adobe Systems, Acrobat Engineering 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-wcag-teamb-request@w3.org [mailto:public-wcag-teamb-
> request@w3.org] On Behalf Of John M Slatin
> Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2005 12:00 PM
> To: public-wcag-teamb@w3.org
> Subject: GL 3.1 L3 SC4 (Section titles)
> 
> 
> 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 Monday, 10 October 2005 18:41:43 UTC