RE: deeply nested headings

I have been wondering about a related phenomenon I'm seeing in content 
management systems where an article, blog post or whatever may or may not 
be presented inside a larger page which already has heading mark-up. In 
the first instance, I may bring up a blog post in its own window, and the 
headings assigned by the author (assuming they've done them right) will 
properly convey the structure to me as H1, H2, H2, H3, etc
But in the second instance, that blog post is presented inside a larger 
portal, and I may suddenly find my H1 is now nested inside an H3.

I'm wondering if this may be solved with HTML5 sections, where each 
section becomes a subsection of the controlling document. I would think a 
relative heading structure of the same kind might be useful when one ran 
out of heading levels in a contiguous document. Whether you decided to 
start again at level 6 (e.g., 6.1, 6.2, 6.3) or made your sections at a 
higher level, is this a potential solution? And if so, what considerations 
are there for how users and assistive technologies which identify and 
orient themselves with such relative heading levels?

Michael Gower
Senior Consultant
IBM Accessibility

1803 Douglas Street, Victoria, BC  V8T 5C3
gowerm@ca.ibm.com
voice: (250) 220-1146 * cel: (250) 661-0098 *  fax: (250) 220-8034



From:   "Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken" <tsiegman@wiley.com>
To:     Mitchell Evan <mtchllvn@gmail.com>, Wayne Dick 
<waynedick@knowbility.org>
Cc:     "w3c-wai-ig@w3.org" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Date:   04/23/2015 12:41 PM
Subject:        RE: deeply nested headings



There more likely scenarios is a long embedded article or aside with its 
own internal headings.
 
This is an EPUB issue, but I can attest that EPUB creators have the 
question (myself included). This question is relevant for HTML that does 
not go into the EPUB format as well.
 
Thanks for your help.
 
Tzviya Siegman
Digital Book Standards & Capabilities Lead
Wiley
201-748-6884
tsiegman@wiley.com 
 
From: Mitchell Evan [mailto:mtchllvn@gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2015 12:15 PM
To: Wayne Dick; Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken
Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: deeply nested headings
 
I'll rephrase the question two ways.
First, what's a good experience for the user? To answer this, I'd like to 
hear about real-world examples. Are we talking about a homogeneous 
hierarchy, from chapters all the way down to sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-headings? 
Or are there sometimes distinct regions of content, like a long embedded 
article with its own internal headings? The harder problem to solve will 
be cognitive load for anybody, trying to keep track of this much depth.
Second, what is technically correct for HTML, supported today, and 
reasonably future-proof? It's a valid question, which I'll leave others to 
answer.
 
On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 8:35 AM Wayne Dick <waynedick@knowbility.org> 
wrote:
I think the role with new level is interesting, but a misuse of ARIA.  The 
problem is with the scope of HTML.  This is probably an ePUB issue. 
Publication and testing need more robust semantics than HTML has to offer.
Wayne