Re: Heading and labels

I don’t believe that it was the intent to have table headers covered under 2.4.6.

WCAG refers to “headings” when referring to h1-h6 section titles, and “headers” when referring to table header cells. I think that often table headers should be descriptive, but not always. If you have a table that is expressing data collected the table header may have text that is pretty obscure (e.g., “Data_usrnm_curr”) but is reflective of the data collection and/or storage system.

If you want to make the argument that table headers are labels, I don’t believe that they meet the definition for a label because they are not used to identify a component, they are associated with content within just part of a table. (Label: text<https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/headings-and-labels.html#dfn-text> or other component with a text alternative<https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/headings-and-labels.html#dfn-text-alternative> that is presented to a user to identify a component within Web content<https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/headings-and-labels.html#dfn-content>)

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Director, Accessibility
Adobe

akirkpat@adobe.com<mailto:akirkpat@adobe.com>
http://twitter.com/awkawk



From: Steve Green <steve.green@testpartners.co.uk>
Date: Monday, September 26, 2022 at 4:01 AM
To: Adam Cooper <cooperad@bigpond.com>, 'Tom Shaw' <Tom-Shaw@hotmail.com>, WAI-IG <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: RE: Heading and labels
Resent-From: WAI-IG <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Resent-Date: Monday, September 26, 2022 at 3:55 AM


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I agree with Adam’s assessment that a column heading is a label.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd


From: Adam Cooper <cooperad@bigpond.com>
Sent: 26 September 2022 04:24
To: 'Tom Shaw' <Tom-Shaw@hotmail.com>; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: RE: Heading and labels

The Definition of label in the glossary is: "text or other component with a text alternative that is presented to a user to identify a component within Web content"

So I would say ‘yes’ … a column heading in a table labels the column and is therefore subject to 2.4.6 regardless of any developer biases about concepts like components …

The issue with this success criterion is not its scope in my view, but how ‘describes topic or purpose’ can be evaluated …

There is an inexplicable urge with web professionals to include as little text as possible in a user interface so topic or purpose may only become apparent to certain users with repetition and/or  explanation and/or context …





From: Tom Shaw <Tom-Shaw@hotmail.com<mailto:Tom-Shaw@hotmail.com>>
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2022 7:56 PM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: Heading and labels

Hi.

Are we saying that Table headers can be thought of as labels (or possibly headings) - as they are labelling the column? Therefore, if a table header is not descriptive or does not exactly describe the purpose of the data it represents that it could fail under 2.4.6 Headings and Labels (AA) ?

Thanks!


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