WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Value and prioritization of large-scale things a web site can do for improved accessibility

for

From: Dave Merrill
Date: Apr 17, 2013 12:45PM

Thanks Joe.

The coexistence of explicit heading levels and a nested container hierarchy
definitely is messy, no question. I hope that doesn't mean semantic
containers can't ever be used though.

Do you think the use of h1 at every level, like some examples in the
standard, is the cause of the reader problems you see? I personally don't
expect real sites to do that, standards or not, because the css required to
style nested headings appropriately is prohibitively verbose and
inefficient. If heading levels are appropriate for their location within
the semantic hierarchy, does that work reliably?

Ultimately, from my perch at a CMS vendor, these decisions are really
our customers' to make. So far, it seem right to me that we provide tools
for semantic containers, headings, ARIA landmarks, and possibly some
ARIA labeling and let each site planner decide what their strategy will
be. Tomorrow's usual may not be the same as today's.


On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Humbert, Joseph A < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I would say No to:
>
> "Place all content within HTML5 semantic container tags, specifically
> article, aside ,nav, section, figure, figcaption, footer, header, and main"
>
> Because the HTML5 outline algorithm (
> http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/sections.html#outlines) is not supported by
> all adaptive technology and Web browser combinations. Therefore, if you
> use the sematic tags you will end up with an incorrect heading structure in
> some cases and not others. I just tested with JAWS 14, NVDA 2013, Voiceover
> on IE9, FF 20, Safari 5. NVDA and Voiceover both had issues. Thankx.
>
> Reference:
>
> http://www.accessibleculture.org/articles/2011/10/jaws-ie-and-headings-in-html5/
> http://html5accessibility.com/
>
> Joe Humbert, Accessibility Specialist
> UITS Adaptive Technology and Accessibility Centers
> Indiana University, Indianapolis and Bloomington
> 535 W Michigan St. IT214 E
> Indianapolis, IN 46202
> Office Phone: (317) 274-4378
> Cell Phone: (317) 644-6824
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> http://iuadapts.Indiana.edu/
>