WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Max amount of h1 tags

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Feb 8, 2012 10:30AM

As a user I think it would not be wise to specify a maximum number of
h1s on a page.
In many cases a web page has one main content (article, news story
etc), for that a single h1 is appropriate (barring that, an ARIA main
tag before the story).
But not web pages are built around a single item of information.
I just reviewed a web page that displays the program of 3 channels of
a radio station.
Each of these is marked up with an h1 with the name of the channel,
followed by the program for that particular channel.
In this case 3 h1s seems to me, like the most logical solution, as you
do not know what channel the user is interested in, and they are
equally important.
Neither does there seem to be an item on the page thatis more
important than these 3 sections, so making that an h1 and the sections
an h2 does not really make sense either.
I've seen quite a few pages that start with an h1 at the top stating
the name of the website or some such. That, in my opinion, is a
complete waste of the h1 tag, at least as far as A.T. is concerned.
I think careful evaluation of the individual web page and consistency
between sub pages of a website are the most important accessibility
concerns as far as heading structure is concerned, not the number of
headings of a certain level.
Cheers
-B

On 2/8/12, Steve Flaukner < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> OK on FAE. I came across a page that has 8 h1's. FAE kicked back but could
> find nothing in WCAG.
> On Feb 8, 2012 12:07 PM, "Jared Smith" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 10:00 AM, Steve Flaukner wrote:
>> > I should of typed FAE.
>>
>> You should be very careful with many of the recommendations of FAE.
>> They often have little to do with guidelines and more to do with
>> personal interpretations and opinions. This is one of many case where
>> the tool is suggesting a failure or issue where there isn't one.
>>
>> Having one <h1> at the beginning of the main content is usually a good
>> idea for most pages, but it certainly is not a conformance failure to
>> do otherwise.
>>
>> Jared
>>