Re: Should a heading's styling match its programmatic level?

On 12/11/2020 13:46, Aimee Wyld wrote:
> I'm looking for some clarification on accessible headings if someone can 
> help please? I've been using Microsoft Accessibility Insights tool to 
> check a site, and one of the guided checks states that 'A heading's 
> programmatic level must match the level that's presented visually' - 
> does this mean that if a page has an h1 and an h2, then the h2 must be 
> visually different from the h1?

I would say no, not necessarily.

The main idea behind 1.3.1 (at least the way I see it) is that it 
assumes a site may use a particular styling to visually convey aspects 
such as relationship, hierarchy, and the nature of particular pieces of 
content. So generally, the visual design will have h1s larger than h2s, 
and the intent of 1.3.1 is to make sure this is also properly reflected 
in the underlying structure.

Now, 1.3.1 doesn't work in reverse, so to speak. It doesn't say that a 
particular HTML structure must also have a particular visual 
style/presentation. So no, this does not mean that the h1 *must* be 
bigger than/styled differently from the h2, in this case. It's certainly 
useful/helpful for sighted users when the visual presentation also makes 
clear what things are, but there's no hard direct WCAG requirement for 
this (as it was, I'd argue, assumed back when the SC was made that the 
problem would be the other way around - visual things not reflected in 
markup).

To complicate matters though, I'd say that there's an additional aspect 
where 1.3.1 gets a bit fuzzy ... because there are certainly situations 
where regardless of their presentation - which is the concern of 1.3.1 - 
there's often a certain "implied"/intrinsic relationship/structure that, 
if absent, we would file as a failure of 1.3.1. Say both h1s and h2s are 
styled to look absolutely identical (same size, color, weight, etc), but 
there was a clear relationship here that a sighted user may still 
intrinsically understand (i.e. regardless of visual style, the user can 
infer the relative hierarchy between the headings). Then, if those 
headings weren't properly marked up with an adequate relative hierarchy, 
we'd likely fail them under 1.3.1 as well. So it's not *always* so clear 
cut.

At least that's my take on this. Others may disagree with the last bit 
*grin*

P
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Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Thursday, 12 November 2020 15:54:45 UTC