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Re: Left Column and Heading Level Order

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From: lgreco@berkeley.edu
Date: Jul 6, 2012 3:18PM

hello:
i agree that having a h2 show up before an h1 sends the rong message. the
only thing as a user i find more frustrating is not having the 1 at all.
and if its ok to have the 2 first i think you are not far off from saying
its ok to not have a h1 at all.

> This response is not directed at Jared. He and David have simply raised a
> good and frequently-heard point which I'd like to address.
>
> On Jul 5, 2012, at 11:51 PM, Jared Smith wrote:
>
>> I've never seen a real strong argument against having <h2>s come
>> before the <h1>. I see no accessibility or validation reasons why this
>> would be bad. Certainly this would be preferable to restructuring the
>> code order so that content does not match the visual presentation
>> order.
>
>
> I will leave assessment of the relative "strength" of the argument to the
> reader, but here it is, in any event...
>
> For the user who wants to know: "what's on this page", encountering H2
> before H1 creates an instant quandary: Do I read the first heading(s)
> encountered (after all, if H2 is OK, why not H3 or H4? Why not 2 H2s and
> some H3s as well?), or the first H1 heading?
>
> Once the door is open to illogical heading levels the quandary cannot be
> resolved programmatically. Ergo, the user is stuck reading ALL headings,
> or else choosing to skip to H1 heedless of the preceding content.
>
> Placing H2 before H1 is effectively an announcement that headings are
> being used for "importance" or styling rather than organizational
> purposes. In such cases, heading levels can't really be trusted for little
> things like "navigation". That's a bad outcome, right?!
>
> [ Notable sidenote: HTML 5 *redefines* headings in HTML to something
> that's a lot more like the PDF definition. Minimally, HTML 5's definition
> does not include the idea of "importance" from HTML 4. Hmm. ]
>
> Many users really do leverage headings for navigation (certainly according
> to WebAIM's latest survey of screen reader users).
>
> For these users, encountering H2 (or H4, why not?) before H1 simply gives
> them less reason to trust that the heading levels they encounter will
> usefully represent logical subsections of content. Instead, they conclude
> that the page's author must be of the sort who thinks that "Our H3 style
> is the perfect font, size and color to be used for the company's name in
> an address block in the footer," or some such. Yes, I know, many of us
> (myself included) labor under various CSS limitations, inline editing
> restrictions, etc. Ok... but at least we should be able to agree on what
> right (or wrong) looks like!
>
> When heading levels are used for purposes other than structure, end users
> are generally consigned to troll through every heading to find content of
> interest rather than being able to use heading levels to "drill down" to
> content of interest.
>
> The only salve is that web-pages are usually relatively small bits of
> content - maybe two or three thousand words. For this reason alone one
> might grant that heading levels in general are less important in typical
> HTML settings. It's acceptable, I guess, to force the AT user to grind
> from heading to heading and to train them not to expect real utility from
> heading levels.
>
> Well, maybe that's cool in HTML, but it's not a generalizable point.
> Please do not bring that mentality to PDF! PDF files often contain far,
> far more content than a single web-page. Most PDFs are *not* riddled with
> links, especially internal links, and internal links have very low utility
> to AT users in today's PDF for certain specific technical reasons.
>
> As such, Headings are the only way for AT users to get around PDFs with
> any alacrity.
>
> I'd like to put the shoe on the other foot: What's the "strong argument"
> for tolerating illogical structure? Surely it can't be to accommodate a
> coding convenience? That's not a reason accessibility folks would accept
> anyplace else: why here?
>
> I'm not asking for argument's sake. I'm genuinely interested to know the
> background on why rigor in heading levels isn't a "big deal"
> (historically). Is it because HTML's definition for heading was fuzzy?
> Maybe various implementations didn't bother with decent utilization of
> heading levels back in the early days? I'm no HTML guru; someone feel free
> to help me out here...
>
> Best regards,
>
> Duff Johnson
>
> President, NetCentric US (Creators of CommonLook)
> ISO 32000 Intl. Project Co-Leader, US Chair
> ISO 14289 US Chair
> PDF Association Vice-Chair
>
> Office: +1 617 401 8140
> Mobile: +1 617 283 4226
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> www.commonlook.com
>
> > > >