Re: Using Heading to Replace Skip Links

Sailesh,
You make a valid point in your post. I think there should be greater
consensus on whether H69 is sufficient or not for SC 2.4.1, which
seemed to be the intent of the original post by Vivienne - correct me
otherwise. Also note that the definition of section (from
understanding SC 2.4.10 – Key Terms) reads: “A self-contained portion
of written content that deals with one or more related topics or
thoughts. Note: A section may consist of one or more paragraphs and
include graphics, tables, lists and sub-sections.”
Correct me, but this definition seems to imply that a section is part
of the written content besides other things. If one is to replace
‘headings’ with ‘structure’ and ‘content’ with ‘sections,’ H42
becomes, “…HTML and XHTML heading markup to provide semantic code for
headings (implying *structure*) in the content (implying *from which
Sections are derived*). Isn’t this H69 written differently? On a
related note, G141 and H69 may talk about the same thing but then
refer to different success criteria. Shouldn’t there be a single
technique on headings which points to multiple success criteria?
To help understand, I took a line from each of the techniques below:
**H42: The objective of this technique is to use HTML and XHTML
heading markup to provide semantic code for headings in the content.
(SC 1.3.1)
**H69: The objective of this technique is to use section headings to
convey the structure of the content. (SC 2.4.1)
**G141: The objective of this technique is to ensure that sections
have headings that identify them. (SC 1.3.1; 2.4.10)

-Devarshi

>>Sailesh wrote:
H69 is authored with reference to SC 2.4.1 and not SC 2.4.10. That's
why I maintain that  being able to skip to an h1 or h2 that hopefully
is the main content is a byproduct of user agent's feature that lets
one skip headings to comprehend page structure etc. Then it does not
deserve to be a separate technique but maybe merged with H42.
Yes as you note, some pages do not have headings at start of some
content sections. Typically left nav or breadcrumb nav and sometimes
even main content, though there might be other headings on the page.
One may insert invisible headings to aid screen reader navigation ...
this is exploiting the screen reader's heading navigation feature.
This will not work for sighted keyboard users. Adding visible
headings where none exist will help the page comply with SC 2.4.10
(AAA) and might provide an alternative way to skip to
main content SC 2.4.1).

Received on Wednesday, 16 May 2012 21:46:47 UTC