RE: WCAG vialations or accessibility enhancements

Katie et al, 

I appreciate everyone’s feedback, viewpoints and interpretation on this.

At CSUN, I will be conducting serval non-visual user interviews with questions on their experiences with web accessibility and I’ll include this topic in my research.

I hope their hearing and cognitive experience matches our interpretations of what they need.

Best Regards.

Alan Smith

From: Katie Haritos-Shea
Sent: Thursday, March 1, 2018 7:03 PM
To: Michael Gower
Cc: Alan; Rakesh Paladugula; Ramakrishnan Subramanian; WAI Interest Group
Subject: RE: WCAG vialations or accessibility enhancements

Well said, Mike.

WCAG interpretations can comprise whole careers, and do. 

Alan, I think we would all like and encourage headings to be used and nested correctly. 

But for technology agnostic reasons 1.3.1 has no requirement (in the normative WCAG 2 standard language) that specifically identifies that 'headings must be nested properly'. 

That was not because when WCAG 2 was being written that the WG members didn't want to include that notion, but we were trying to move away from the HTML technology-specific language in WCAG 1. Not an excuse, it is just the landscape at the time.

Additionally, requiring nested headings *can* become a *requirement* of any organization, if they so chose. 

In a court of law though, the chances of winning a lawsuit against a website based on headings not being nested properly, per WCAG 2 conformance, might be hard to prove.

Should developers use nested headings to improve accessibility? Can you use 1.3.1 as a basis of discussion to convince your developers to nest headings? Absolutely!

On Mar 1, 2018 5:51 PM, "Michael Gower" <michael.gower@ca.ibm.com> wrote:
To seek a place between these two viewpoints, I'll offer the following. Where an H1 is followed by an H7, it is almost certainly going to be chosen to achieve a desired pre-existing presentation for a subheading, not because the content flows naturally between the levels. So I agree with Alan's statement that doing so simply to grab the heading presentation treatment is far less than optimal. I'd flag it if I were reviewing such content.

However, there are situations where non-contiguous heading levels can make structural sense -- where the optimal match may be an H1 > H3 structure in some circumstances. Think of a subject like travel, where larger countries may be divided into sections which it makes no sense to impose on Vatican City or Gibraltar. Either the editor is going to have to alter what is found at an H2 level for small countries (which could itself confuse any screen reader user browser by a certain heading level), or the editor is going to have to potentially skip levels to make information on, say, major cities, match up at the same hierarchical level across the sovereign states. Some authors will prefer the sectional content to offer contiguous heading levels; others will want a consistency through the content.

So i think it makes sense to say an optimal heading level follows a predictable and understandable hierarchical structure, without necessarily imposing a requirement that the hierarchy be contiguous.
---
In regard to Ramakrishnan's other questions about unique labels for regions and links which open in new windows...

There is no perfect place I know of to fail the use of the same label on two different regions on a page. However, it obviously flies in the face of consistent identification, etc. When I oversaw the creation of the IBM Accessibility Checklist, we decided to specifically call this out as a requirement in a supplemental comment for ARIA13. So for at least IBM products, it is a requirement.http://www-03.ibm.com/able/guidelines/ci162/bypass_blocks.html#ARIA11supplement

In answer to your question about links opening new windows, there are two general techniques which cover this: G200: Opening new windows and tabs from a link only when necessaryand G201: Giving users advanced warning when opening a new window 
Like all Sufficient Techniques, they are not requirements, but merely an acceptable way to meet the Predictable guideline. So while you can definitely improve predictable behaviour by incorporating them, they are not required to achieve accessibility, as measured by WCAG.

Trying to prove how something fails against WCAG is often a lot harder to do than showing how something succeeds. Hope that helps.

Michael Gower
IBM Accessibility
Research

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



From:        ALAN SMITH <alands289@gmail.com>
To:        Katie Haritos-Shea <ryladog@gmail.com>, Rakesh Paladugula <prakesh369@gmail.com>
Cc:        Ramakrishnan Subramanian <ram.eict2013@gmail.com>, WAI Interest Group <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Date:        2018-03-01 01:28 PM
Subject:        RE: WCAG vialations or accessibility enhancements


Well, I’ll be the first to push back on this on behalf of the disabled and not the designer.
 
I’ve always said we can make are web pages technically accessible by the letter of the guidelines but they may still not be accessible to those who need them to be so.
 
If you are coding your accessibility for designers, then you can have h1 followed by h5. 
If you are coding your accessibility for blind users, then follow the proper hierarchical order.
 
You will have a better website and you won’t have to manually review each suggested violation of this out of order heading structure by every automated testing tool which will flag this as a potential violation.
 
You can always set a font value with class if your designers need a certain “look” for your text on the page.
 
Think of how you decide to code for accessibility makes a disabled person - and in this case a blind person - feel when they use your site.
 
Alan Smith
 
From: Katie Haritos-Shea
Sent: Thursday, March 1, 2018 2:41 PM
To: Rakesh Paladugula
Cc: Ramakrishnan Subramanian; WAI Interest Group
Subject: Re: WCAG vialations or accessibility enhancements
 
Hello,
 
Phill Jenkins is correct concerning the headings. WCAG 2.0 does not specifically require headings be nested.
 
And yes, this is the right place to post this kind of question on WCAG conformance ....:-)
* katie *
Katie Haritos-Shea 
Principal ICT Accessibility Architect 
WCAG/Section 508/ADA/AODA/QA/FinServ/FinTech/Privacy, IAAP CPACC+WAS = CPWA
Cell: 703-371-5545|ryladog@gmail.com|Oakton, VA |LinkedIn Profile

People may forget exactly what it was that you said or did, 
but people will never forget how you made them feel.......

Our scars remind us of where we have been........they do not have to dictate where we are going.
 
On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 7:56 AM, Rakesh Paladugula <prakesh369@gmail.com> wrote:
My thoughts are :

1. Main heading can be a level 2. No harm in it. Having h5 after h2 is a violation as per 1.3.1 info & relationships.
2. I consider having improper text for labels as violation as per 2.4.6 headings and labels. In your second container the label is Apple but the text is of banana.
3. I don’t think it is a violation.

Thanks & Regards
Rakesh

On 14-Feb-2018, at 11:41 AM, Ramakrishnan Subramanian <ram.eict2013@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Members,
I hope it is appropriate to post this query here.
I kindly request you to help me understand few of the accessibility
related issues mentioned below.
Whether these are treated as accessibility enhancement which would be
helpful for the end user. Or accessibility violation.
Heading order:
Whether the following heading level is considered an accessibility
violation? if yes, which criteria does this violate?
The first heading level in the page is <h2> sample text </h2>
The next heading level is <h5> sample text </h5>

Landmark regions:
When there are different content given inside two different aria
region, with same aria label. Under which criteria this fails?
<div role=”region” aria-label=”apple”>
Apple related content goes here
</div>
<div role=”region” aria-label=”apple”>
Bannana related content goes here
</div>
3. Links which open in a new window:
When there is no indication for the screen reader users for the link
which opens in a new window, is that considered an accessibility
violation? If yes, which criteria does this issue violate?


-- 

Thanks and Regards
Ramakrishnan