RE: Heading and labels

Andrew, 

 

I thought WCAG was also intended to be ‘technology agnostic’ and therefore not restricted to defining concepts in the way that they may be defined in HTML … 

 

there is no normative definition of ‘header’ or ‘heading’ that I can find in WCAG 2.x. In my view, it is a significant shortcoming of WCAG that common user interface components are not well-define or described as it may make this kind of discussion easier.

 

This is what I meant by ‘developer biases’ or the tendency to assume that something in a user interface has a nifty correlate with the technology used to implement it …  

 

a <label> is associated using the ‘for’ attribute, but this is a concept brought into being by HTML. A label is something that identifies something else … signifier and signified – the actual means by which this is achieved is specific to a web technology.

 

Also, if I understand you correctly, are you saying that a table header can contain text that is not related to either the content or context of the table in which it occurs (i.e., machine-generated)? 

 

 

 

 

From: Andrew Kirkpatrick <akirkpat@adobe.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2022 12:18 AM
To: Steve Green <steve.green@testpartners.co.uk>; Adam Cooper <cooperad@bigpond.com>; 'Tom Shaw' <Tom-Shaw@hotmail.com>; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: 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:  <https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/headings-and-labels.html#dfn-text> text or other component with a  <https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/headings-and-labels.html#dfn-text-alternative> text alternative that is presented to a user to identify a component within Web  <https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/headings-and-labels.html#dfn-content> content)

 

Thanks,

AWK

 

Andrew Kirkpatrick

Director, Accessibility

Adobe 

 

 <mailto:akirkpat@adobe.com> akirkpat@adobe.com

 <http://twitter.com/awkawk> 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

 

EXTERNAL: Use caution when clicking on links or opening attachments.

 

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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