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Re: Max amount of h1 tags

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Feb 12, 2012 8:48AM

Hi

Ryan, thanks for the clarification on this.
It is hard to see how "headings make sense" unless you actually see
the set up of the headings on the page, so I think I personally tend
to think of the page too non-visually if you will.
I see your point in trying to make the h tag structure reflect the
visual layout. It could also be argued though that the title of the
page itself reflects better a title of a movie, per the analogy, and
the banner landmark is another option. Though there's nothing wrong
with your suggestion either.

Ben, I believe neither Jaws nor NVDA will look past a heading of a
higher level on a page.
For instance, if you go to
http://www.bbcnews.com
there is first an h1 for news, then an h4 and after that an h2.
If you try to press 2 or 4 when at the top of the page, Jaws will say
"no next heading at level 4/2 in section".
It is only once you press 1 to jump to the first level 1 heading that
you can use 4 or 2 to find the subsequent headings.
Similarly, there is an h3 well down the page preceeded by a lot of
h2s. You can't see the h3 (U.S. and the Americas).
So if I wanted to jum pstraight to news of the U.S. I actually can't
use "3" but instead have to jump from heading to heading to get there,
about 15 to 20 key presses.
If there was another h1 heading called "country news" or some such
before that section I could jump there in 2 key presses.
For this particular page the heading structure is not particularly
screen reader friendly, not if you want to get to items far down the
page.
The other problem with using an h1 heading on top of the page, on a
logo, is that screen reader users who are not aware of this and try to
jump to heading of any higher level will instantly get the "no next
heading at that level" announcement and be under the impression that
there are no other headings on this page.
Of course one could argue this is more of a screen reader
implementation or user training problem, and that, perhaps, anyone
savvy enough to navigate by headings is aware of this.
Cheers
-B

On 2/12/12, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 10:14 AM, Birkir R. Gunnarsson
> < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> Just curious why you want to put the logo of a company in an h1 heading.
>
> Makes sense for the name of the company to be the main heading on its
> homepage.
>
>> Besides, as I pointed out in an earlier post, not all web pages will
>> be built around a single main focus or article. There are plenty of
>> sites that present different types of information with, perhaps,
>> several equally important page sections.
>> Say I logged in to my online bank, do I want to look at my accounts,
>> my credit cards, my online bills, my reward points. (well, frankly the
>> accounts and bills sections I generally want to skip over *grin*). It
>> seems to be somewhat arbitrary if someone decided one of these was the
>> "main" section on the page.
>
> Yes, but it would be reasonable to have an overarching heading for all of
> them.
>
>> I believe there is an argument for making all of these an h1
>> heading,or create an h1 heading above the first one,and making all of
>> them h2 headings. I think either has merits, though I prefer the first
>> one, as it allows me to quickly cycle through the page, rather than
>> first having to locate the h1 heading and then use the h2 headings to
>> get to my section (admittedly not a big difference).
>
> Your AT doesn't let you skip directly to the first h2? In both JAWS
> and NVDA you should be able to press "h" to jump between headings
> irrespective of level, or press "2" to jump between h2 elements only.
>
> --
> Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
>