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Re: how screen readers navigate by headline

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From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Sep 1, 2011 4:27PM

Angela

Let me have a first crack at it.
Jaws (I believe NVDA, Hal and Window Eyes do the same) allow you to
navigate by heading, either by using "h" to jump to the next heading,
regardless of its level, or use the number keys 1 through 6 (in the
top row, not on the numpad) to jump to the next heading within that
level. In other words, if you have a part of a website with
heading level 1
heading level 3
heading level 1
heading level 2
I believe that pressing 2 when you are at the top of the page would
result in saying "no heading of that level in this section", due to
the fact there is another heading level 1 below your location, so that
#2 heading is not vissible until you get there. To get there you'd
first have to press 1 to get to the second level 1 heading, then 2 to
get to the level 2 heading within that section.


Listers, please correct me f this is misunderstanding how Jaws andles
headings, I'll consult documentation or experiment later to confirm
this, but I am at least 80% sure this is how it works.
Also consult: http://www.freedomscientific.com/training/Surfs-Up/Navigating.htm
for Jaws training on navigating webpages (including headings).

A sighted colleague of mine, who teaches A.T. for a living, has long
complained about the lack of guidelines and that there are virtually
no techniques to teach people to most quickly get a handle on a
website, and the reason is that they are so diverse there is no best
practice to explore a website..
What I truly like, as a user, is to have the main content of the web
site marked up with a level 1 heading.
If I click on an page containing and article, I want the title of that
article to be a level 1 heading so I can use "1" to jump straigt to
it.
I'd say the majority of websites (including WebAIM) do this, and I am
very grateful for it.
(for discussions on different viewpoints on how to useheadings, you
can see the list archive or www.webaim.org).
Using too many headings is disruptive, make the order logical if you
can, and make sure if there is a single purpose/point with the page
(e.g. an article or a form) that the user can navigate to it with as
few key strokes as possible, where I see a level 1 heading play a
crucial role.
The more items on a page, the higher the heading level, e.g. news
story archive could have heading level 4s so that "3" can be used to
jump over all of these things to the next thing on the page. You could
use heading level 1 for the first head line, or title f section, then
keep all the news stories a level 2 or level 3 heading so that auser
who wants to jump directly to the next section can do that.

Honestly I, and I believe most users, tend to use down arrow to
inspect the page, unless it's disfunctionally big, and memorize the
shortcuts I can make for the future (notice that a list or a table
contains what I want, I notice headings level 1 and 2, but not so much
3s and above). I also make extensive use of Jaws's "n" functionality
(jump to first instance of a different element), NvDA and Hal have
this too, so I suspect Window Eyes follows suit (in NVDA this does not
work logically for some reason, but Hal and Jaws handle this
identically).

I've flirted with the idea of formalizing these strategies in a
document and send it to A.T. teachers to see if they can add or modify
that article, or if they say these things are totally unusable.

Hope some of this helps.
-Birkir


On 9/1/11, Angela French < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> I am aware that screen readers (at least JAWS) provide a means for users to
> navigate by heading. I am also aware of the benefits of choosing the
> correcting heading level to provide the reader a clear sense of document
> structure. What I'm wondering though is, by what means does the screen
> reader user have of getting the big picture sense of document structure
> other than navigating through? As a sighted user, I ascertain a document's
> structure by the logical, relative use of headline font size and design.
>
> When a page is being navigated by headlines, how much importance do you
> place in the actual heading level that is read to you, or are you more
> interested in the content of the headline to get context? In other words,
> how important is proper heading levels to you? Or do you just ignore them?
>
> I am preparing some accessibility training for our site's content editors
> (we use a CMS) and I am aiming to give practical examples of obstacles that
> are presented to users when content isn't marked up correctly.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Angela French
> Internet Specialist
> State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
> 360-704-4316
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> http://www.checkoutacollege.com/
>
>