- From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>
- Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 10:40:38 -0700
- To: Matt May <mcmay@w3.org>
- Cc: tina@greytower.net, w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
On Wednesday, June 25, 2003, at 09:14 AM, Matt May wrote: > On Wednesday, June 25, 2003, at 07:17 AM, tina@greytower.net wrote: >> But DOES it denote a sense of hierarchy, or a sense of importance ? > Yes, by design. > > The most common problem with designers' use of <h1> to <h6> is their > reliance on the visual presentation (that is, the built-in style) of > the elements, rather than using the elements structurally and altering > their style. In fact, on my personal site, my <h1> is actually smaller > than the <h2>s. It's more important to have that structure than to > deal with the header elements as presentational. As long as the different header levels are used reasonably self-consistently (i.e. all things which are meant to be most important share the same heading number, be it <h2> or <h1>; in other words, a RELATIVE scheme is used and used consistently within the document), what accessibility barriers are introduced by the practice of skipping <h1> or jumping from <h2> to <h4>? It's my contention that as long as the _relationship_ between the headers is reasonable, the exact _numbers_ employed need not matter -- you will still be able to construct an appropriate hierarchical structure of the site even if the document only uses the even-numbered elements (<h2>, <h4>, <h6>). > XHTML 2 is introducing a <section> element, so that headers within a > given section would "know" which level they are. This is actually support for my position -- it shows that the exact numbers used are unimportant, and that what matters is the relative hierarchy established by the heading tags. If the exact numbers mattered -- if <h1> _had_ to be the first tag, for accessibility's sake -- then the XHTML 2.0 proposal of <h> tags would be an affront to accessibility. However, the truth is that it's a boon to accessibility (as well as portability). Ergo, the exact numbers do _not_ matter. And an insistence on <h1> as the first header (instead of <h2>) is inappropriate. --Kynn > -- Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com> http://kynn.com Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain http://idyllmtn.com Author, CSS in 24 Hours http://cssin24hours.com Inland Anti-Empire Blog http://blog.kynn.com/iae Shock & Awe Blog http://blog.kynn.com/shock
Received on Wednesday, 25 June 2003 16:11:07 UTC