Re: nesting header elements (3.5.1)

This doesn't work for HTML. H1 etc are not container elements, so a document
will not end with the same level header as it started with (except in
exceptional circumstances)

I agree with the general idea I think - that a page which has

H1  H2  H3  H3  H2  H3  H3

would be ok, as would a page that had

H3  H4  H5  H6  H5  H5  H6  H4  H5  H4  H4

but not a page that went

H2 H1 H3 H4 H3 H4

(unless specified by the author. There are legitimate use cases for having H2
H1 H2 I suspect, although they may be presentational.)

Charles McCN

On Thu, 9 Mar 2000, Harvey Bingham wrote:

  At 2000-02-18 17:06-0500, Wendy wrote:
  >Hello,
  >
  >Len Kasday raised the following issue regarding technique 3.5.1 in the 21 
  >December draft [http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/ert/ert-19991221.html
  >]:
  ><blockquote>
  >| 1. The first header element in the document must be H1
  >| 2. There must be only one H1 element in the document
  
  Since a document may be part of a higher-level document, the requirement
  to have any, or even only one H1 element in a document, is too constraining.
  My preference is that a document should complete a level, in other words,
  if it starts with <Hn>, it should end with </Hn> and not contain any
  <Hm>...</Hm> where m, n in 1, 2, ... 6; and m < n. That would allow
  a reasonable way to make the set of pages with textual content nest
  consistently. In the set, the "top-level" document could have just one
  <H1>...</H1>.
  
  The concept of a document manifest, containing a correctly nested set of
  page references, is part of the open e-book work. In it, presumable
  the document's pages are ordered, and their contents may have nested
  levels of detail, referenced at appropriate places, either in the manifest
  or in pages.
  
  In most pages today, many references are to pages that are not strictly
  part of the logic of the current document. For these, the expectation
  that they have <H1>...</H1> is certainly acceptable.
  ...
  
  >Technique 3.5.1 [priority 2] Check document for header nesting
  >Discussion Status:
  >awaiting discussion
  >Evaluation:
  >Header elements (H1-H6) should be checked to ensure they are nested 
  >according to the following rules
  >Header levels must not increase by more than 1 level. Example: H2 
  >following H1 is good. H3 following H1 is bad.
  
  Would have to check any internal references to other docs to see if they
  contribute correctly nested material. Many referenced pages are "out of the
  hierarchy", so somehow they would need to be exempted.
  
  Regards/Harvey Bingham
  

--
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
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Received on Thursday, 9 March 2000 15:41:44 UTC