RE: on headings, labels, links, and image maps

No question, this is the intent.

So, if you have a long document with a navigation and the author chooses to make a navigation section title that appears first in the page reading order have an H2 heading, and then has headings for the rest of the document that are otherwise perfect (or for the sake of argument, perhaps the headings for the rest of the document are good except that they skip the H2 level) would you say that this page fails 2.4.10?  I don't think that one can say that, but that's just my opinion...

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe Systems 

akirkpat@adobe.com
http://twitter.com/awkawk
http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility


-----Original Message-----
From: David Best [mailto:davebest@ca.ibm.com] 
Sent: Friday, May 28, 2010 11:10 AM
To: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Cc: Gregg Vanderheiden; richard@userite.com; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org; w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org
Subject: RE: on headings, labels, links, and image maps

Andrew, I believe the intent of 2.4.10 Section Headings (AAA) is to
organize the page content, which implies nested Headers for large sections
of information.

"The intent of this Success Criterion is to provide headings for sections
of a Web page, when the page is organized into sections. For instance, long
documents are often divided into a variety of chapters, chapters have
subtopics and subtopics are divided into various sections, sections into
paragraphs, etc. When such sections exist, they need to have headings that
introduce them. This clearly indicates the organization of the content,
facilitates navigation within the content, and provides mental "handles"
that aid in comprehension of the content. Other page elements may
complement headings to improve presentation."

Cheers,
David Best
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  |Andrew Kirkpatrick <akirkpat@adobe.com>                                                                                                           |
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  |"richard@userite.com" <richard@userite.com>                                                                                                       |
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  |"w3c-wai-ig@w3.org" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>, Gregg Vanderheiden <gv@trace.wisc.edu>                                                                   |
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  |05/28/2010 10:28 AM                                                                                                                               |
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  |RE: on headings, labels, links, and image maps                                                                                                    |
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  |w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org                                                                                                                         |
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Richard,
Re: 1.  I'm not trying to say that there isn't any benefit to nesting the
headings properly, just that it isn't required by WCAG 2.0.  "Should" can
sound as imperative as you believe it to, but there is a difference between
'should' and 'must' and that difference is where I believe that you're
misunderstanding the requirement.

Re: 2.  Correct reading sequence is based on the words being in the correct
order, not the headings being correctly nested.

I understand your position, and in fact agree with you and follow correct
nesting whenever possible, but think that it is worth being clear about
what is covered and not covered in WCAG 2.0.

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe Systems

akirkpat@adobe.com
http://twitter.com/awkawk
http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility


-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Warren [mailto:richard@userite.com]
Sent: Friday, May 28, 2010 10:15 AM
To: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: RE: on headings, labels, links, and image maps

1) When using a screenreader I can jump up and down a well constructed
page quite easily by going to the next or previous heading. If the
headings are not nested properly I start to wonder if I have missed
something and have to go into virtual focus to read all the surrounding
text. So for me "should" is a pretty imperative should.
2) Guidelines are just that - guidelines. If you have a very good reason
not to nest headings properly, and can at the same time ensure that the
reading sequence is logical, then fair enough. But I would love to see
an example of where this has been achieved.

Richard
http:www.userite.com


On Thu, 2010-05-27 at 11:47 -0700, Andrew Kirkpatrick wrote:
> 1) Headings - yes you are correct, level A requires coded headings so
> that blind users can get an overview of teh page and jump to sections of
> interest by listing the headings. Level AA requires these headings to be
> nested correctly (ie form a logical semantic structure)
>
> I did a bit of fact-checking to answer my own question:
> Headings do not need to be nested properly to comply with WCAG 2.0.  This
is desirable, but not required. If you look at the How To Meet information
for SC 2.4.10 (2.4.10 Section Headings: Section headings are used to
organize the content. (Level AAA)) you'll see the note below:
>
> "In HTML, this would be done using the HTML heading elements (h1, h2, h3,
h4, h5, and h6). These allow user agents to automatically identify section
headings. Other technologies use other techniques for identifying headers.
To facilitate navigation and understanding of overall document structure,
authors should use headings that are properly nested (e.g., h1 followed by
h2, h2 followed by h2 or h3, h3 f
> followed by h3 or h4, etc.)."
>
> Note the "should" - it doesn't say "must".  That's my take on it...
> AWK

Received on Friday, 28 May 2010 15:20:30 UTC