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Re: headings for links list

for

From: Angela French
Date: May 16, 2011 4:21PM

I'm going to step out here and give a practical example. This site is for the agency I work for. I have been asked to complete an informal accessibility review with suggestions for changes. While there are many problems with the site, this is one example that appears throughout:

http://168.156.9.142/college/d_facultycompensation.aspx

The page contains a table that has been used for layout purposes to contain links to PDFs. As you will see, it is impossible to navigate by links list as all the screen reader user will hear is "PDF, PDF......". I am thinking through a replacement technique for this purpose. I am leaning towards a list where each list item would be coded like this:

<li><a href="filename.pdf">Link Label (<img src="../../imgs/layout/icon_pdf.gif" alt="PDF" width="14" height="14" border="0" align="top"> 250KB)</a></li>
<li><a href="filename.doc">Another Link Label [<img src="../../imgs/layout/icon_word.gif" alt="WORD document" width="14" height="14" border="0"> 350KB]</a></li>

My quandary though, is the best way to put some sort of categorization heading for these lists (there would be three lists on this page). I would like them to look the same throughout the site (to the sited user). However, if they are headlines, then the heading number could vary from page to page if there was additional content on the page. For example, if no other content existed above these particular lists, then it would make sense to give them an h2 heading. On another page, such as this one http://168.156.9.142/college/s_runningstart.aspx , they could possibly be an h3.

This is what led me to ask what screen reader users like to see as a heading for lists of links - in this case links to documents.


Thanks,
Angela