- From: John M Slatin <john_slatin@austin.utexas.edu>
- Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 16:22:03 -0500
- To: "Ben Caldwell" <caldwell@trace.wisc.edu>, "Joe Clark" <joeclark@joeclark.org>, "WAI-GL" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Ben, I think I was the one (or one of the ones) who raised the issue about unique headings in the WCAG 2.0 document, and at least at that point my concern *was* limited to the Guidelines document. I certainly wouldn't want to make it a requirement-- there are times when repetitive headings are in fact accurately reflective of document structure and helpful as navigation aids. For example, on http://www.ital.utexas.edu/resource/faq.html, each of the Frequently Asked Questions is tagged as a heading, and each begins with the word "Question." My first instinct was to reject this idea; but then I discovered that it gave me an easy way to jump from question to question, whether in order or at random. The repetition of the word "Question" is also useful because there's no way for users new to the page to anticipate what other, more unique words might appear at the beginning of each question. So: we should require the use of appropriate markup for headings, then use our informative examples and the techniques documents to help readers create appropriate content for those headings. John John Slatin, Ph.D. Director, Institute for Technology & Learning University of Texas at Austin FAC 248C 1 University Station G9600 Austin, TX 78712 ph 512-495-4288, f 512-495-4524 email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu web http://www.ital.utexas.edu -----Original Message----- From: Ben Caldwell [mailto:caldwell@trace.wisc.edu] Sent: Friday, June 06, 2003 1:52 pm To: 'Joe Clark'; 'WAI-GL' Subject: RE: [12] Use of headings Perhaps this issue [1] needs a bit of clarification... While I agree that WCAG should not explicitly prohibit the use of repetitive headings as described in Joe's example, I think that making some adjustments to the repetitive headings in the guidelines document increases the usability of the guidelines, sets a good example for structuring complex documents and is consistent with what we're currently recommending in checkpoint 2.4 [2]. If I'm remembering correctly, this issue was raised by a member of our working group and applies only to the guidelines document itself. It was not meant to imply that requirements for making headings unique would be introduced into the guidelines. Thoughts? -Ben [1] http://trace.wisc.edu/bugzilla_wcag/show_bug.cgi?id=12 [2] http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/#navigation-mechanisms
Received on Friday, 6 June 2003 17:22:19 UTC