Re: More than one h1 tag

Hi Michael,
There is some logic in what you say, however the <title> element is not visible on the screen or printed page (except when presented at the top of the browser window) therefore it has become practice to use the <h1> element to repeat the <title> value, or at least a near interpretation of it. Thus the first (and only) <h1> IS the title of the page. This is not just an accessibility issue, the Google algorythm also compares the <title> and <h1> to aid scoring.

Semantically each page should have only one top level heading, it describes the purpose of the page. Different areas of the page should start with <h2> e.g. Navigation area, adverts etc. and, of course, subsections of the main text/content. Using this structure the <h2>s do bear a relationship with the original <h1> because they are on the same page, but - more importantly - if a blind user is on a second level heading anywhere in the page, and presses SHIFT/H in Jaws they will be taken to the top level heading, which they expect to be the main heading on the page (i.e. page title).  If we have more than one <h1> then there is no single semantic structure to the page and the blind user will only be able to go back to the section heading not the main page heading.

If (God forbid) you are using Frames to construct your page there might be an argument for having an <h1> in each frame (as each frame is a stored as a seperate document), but we really should treat the web-page as it is presented to the user as a single document (regardless of how it is composed) and therefore ensure that there is only one top level heading on any one page.

Regards
Richard
www.userite.com

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Michael Virant 
  To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2009 2:15 AM
  Subject: Re: More than one h1 tag


  My view is that the web page TITLE is being conflated with the web page's one or more H1 tags in this topic.  Just as a book has one title it typically has several chapters.  Hence a web page should have one title and as many H1 tags as is necessary to convey the same structure.  Then within in chapter (section with heading H1) there may or may not be the need to order future sub headings (H2) all related to the H1 above it.

  The alternative - to have only one H1 followed by one or more H2, H3 is disorientating for all users as it is an artificial representation of the data.  For example if the second section (under a H2) of a document bears no relation to the first section (with H1) then semantic markup forces the relationship of the second section to be a child of the first section when there is no such elationship.

  Michael Virant