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

My understanding of WCAG 2.0 is that it is up to each organization or company to define their requirements for meeting the WCAG 2.0 guidelines.  There are suggested requirements in the techniques document, but these are only suggestions and are not normative in the W3C process.

So an organization can define their own success criteria for meeting requirement "1.3.1 Info and Relationships: Information, structure, and relationships  conveyed through presentation  can be programmatically determined or are available in text. (Level A)".   This could include using headers properly nested.

Jon


-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Kirkpatrick
Sent: Friday, May 28, 2010 9:26 AM
To: richard@userite.com
Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org; Gregg Vanderheiden
Subject: RE: on headings, labels, links, and image maps

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 15:49:56 UTC