WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Word Headings and Title

for

From: Christophe Strobbe
Date: Sep 1, 2011 3:57AM


At 22:34 31-8-2011, LSnider wrote:
>I just wanted to confirm something about Word docs and making them
>accessible.
>
>I have a document that was made with a title and then headings after that,
>and I didn't think that was the best way to go (they chose these from the
>home ribbon bar in Word). What I would do is make the title of the document
>as the H1 and then the major categories would be H2 and any sub categories
>as H3, so for example:

Both Microsoft Word and LibreOffice Writer / OpenOffice.org Writer
have a Title style that can be used for the document's title and a
Subtitle style for (obviously) the document's subtitle. Heading 1,
Heading 2, etcetera can then be used for chapter titles and chapter
subdivisions. These will show up in the Navigation panel (in MS Word)
or the Navigator (in Writer) and in the table of contents that you
can generate automatically in both word processors. (Title and
Subtitle do not show up in the Navigation or the table of contents.)

Using Heading 1 for the document title overthrows this model.

There is a mismatch between this model and the HTML model, which does
not have an element for the document title in the body and therefore
uses H1. Unfortunately, developers of HTML/XHTML export functions in
both MS Word and Writer are unaware of this mismatch (or don't care)
because Title and Subtitle are converted to styled paragraphs instead of H1.

Best regards,

Christophe



>This is the title of the Word doc (H1)
>
>Category 1 (h2)
>sub category 1A (h3)
>Sub category 1B (h3)
>Category 2 (h2)
>sub category 2A (h3)
>Sub category 2B (h3)
>
>Would you agree?


--
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
Research Group on Document Architectures
Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442
B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee
BELGIUM
tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/
Twitter: @RabelaisA11y
---
Open source for accessibility: results from the AEGIS project
www.aegis-project.eu
---
Please don't invite me to Facebook, Quechup or other "social
networks". You may have agreed to their "privacy policy", but I haven't.