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Re: H1 to H4 titles sub titles....

for

From: Will Grignon
Date: May 2, 2011 9:33AM

I concur. Also, consistency from page to page is crucial - it makes all the
difference in the world if a screen reader user can devise a navigation
strategy at the first page and can use this strategy throughout the website
because every page on that site uses the same formatting conventions.

One note, however, I've encountered sites that seem to be separated into
sections, so when one types "1" to find a heading level 1 (I use JAWS
12.5...), the screen reader will only look for and try to find a heading
level 1 in that section and, if none are found, will report the same, even
though there might be dozens of lines formatted as heading level 1 in other
sections on the page.



-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Léonie Watson
Sent: Monday, May 02, 2011 11:16 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] H1 to H4 titles sub titles....

Nancy Johnson wrote:
"The heading on one page goes from an H1 designation to an H4 designation,
Will this be a problem for screen readers?"

It isn't a show stopper if they don't, but it's enormously helpful
if they do. Headings fulfil two useful functions for screen reader users.
They provide a mechanism for navigation, and they help build up a mental map
of content structure.

With most current screen readers you can jump from one heading on
the page to another using a shortcut key. It's something like visually
scanning the page to find the right section, before exploring in more
detail.

The heading levels aren't crucial for navigating through a page in
this way, but they are helpful in terms of building a mental map of the
content structure. Knowing how different sections of content relate to each
other helps make the process of navigating by headings much more successful.

For example, a page might have multiple h2 headings, each followed
by a number of h3 headings. If I moved to the first h2 with Jaws and it
wasn't the section I was looking for,, I could use a short cut key that
would take me directly to the next h2 (bypassing all the h3 headings in
between). If the headings weren't nested logically, I wouldn't be able to
take advantage of this, and would instead need to use the standard heading
navigation key to move through every heading on the page.

The page you've described has a very simple heading structure, so
all of this may not be as pertinent as it would be on other pages. Coming to
the page as a screen reader user though, I'd be asking what relationship the
h4 section had to the main (h1) area of the page? The headings still let me
navigate through the content, but they don't make as much useful information
available about the structure of the content as they could do.

Regards,
Léonie.

--
Nomensa - humanising technology

Léonie Watson, Director of Accessibility & Web Development

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-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Nancy Johnson
Sent: 02 May 2011 15:25
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] H1 to H4 titles sub titles....

Hi,

We are producing a site and part of my job is to see if the htmls and
frontend javascript jquery the design company provided is 508.

The heading on one page goes from an H1 designation to an H4 designation,

Will this be a problem for screen readers?

Thanks in advance,

Nancy