WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: PDF and PowerPoint Heading Question

for

From: Karlen Communications
Date: Feb 24, 2017 10:43AM

The number of heading levels doesn't usually come up in talking about general documents as opposed to web pages. Most of us just want a consistent way to navigate content and figure out what the outline of the content is.

If you look at both iterations of the PDF and the User Experience Survey http://www.karlencommunications.com/PDFsurvey.html

I don't think you'll find feedback on the number of H1, H2 or H3 you might have in a document. Of course this might be because there are other issues that are more of a priority...Maybe I need to develop another survey...

Cheers, Karen.

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of L Snider
Sent: February 24, 2017 12:25 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] PDF and PowerPoint Heading Question

Hi Karen,

Thanks so much, good to know! I wish PowerPoint was like Word in terms of styles being open and put into a style bar, it would be a lot easier if that were consistent between products (she says in a hopeful voice). Very good point about the comparison slides. Won't be at CSUN, but would love to know if you get feedback on that request.

I know there are times when there are two H1s in Word docs, but I have tried to steer clear of any more H1s. I guess my question would be, today do the majority of screen reader users (I know we can't survey 100% of
people) expect Word docs, PDFs, PowerPoints to be different than web pages in terms of how many H1s they get? Would they prefer they are similar? I am asking because for me, I try to only use one H1 on a web page, maybe two if I have to...but from the feedback I got over the years people who use screen readers only wanted one or two H1s for web pages...I have lived many places and I get a lot of different feedback, depending on the local area.

Cheers

Lisa



On Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 11:05 AM, Karlen Communications < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> The section dividers are H1's by default, or they should be. You can
> have more than one H1 in a PDF document and in a Word or PowerPoint document.
> I'm not sure that PowerPoint has the concept of headings other than H1
> and H2. I know if you create the content for a slide presentation in
> Word, you only use Heading 1 (Title Placeholder) and Heading 2 (Body Placeholder).
> You can't use an H3 to make a "nested list."
>
> There is currently no way to identify the default placeholders on
> slides as anything but what they are when tagged as PDF. I think
> Terrill asked about changing text boxes to headings or Title
> Placeholders in a post a couple of weeks ago and you can't do that.
>
> If anyone is going to CSUN, I suggest you talk to the Microsoft folk
> about making this possible in PowerPoint. I'm going to talk to them
> about cleaning up some of the Tags in PDF documents from both Word and
> PowerPoint and will mention the ability to reassign "heading Tags" .
> on both the default placeholders and for Text Boxes. In thinking about
> the comparison slide layout, we really would need the equivalent of an
> H3 for the subtitles on slides using that layout.
>
> Cheers, Karen
>