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Re: Heading order

for

From: Chaals McCathie Nevile
Date: Sep 30, 2015 8:39AM


On Tue, 29 Sep 2015 19:32:58 +0200, Jonathan Avila
< <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

>> We have encountered several instances of improper heading order (e.g.
>> an <h4> above an <h3>), but we can't seem to find a firm agreement as
>> to a) whether
>
> The deciding factor is whether the missing or incorrect order correctly
> communicates information and relationships that are communicated
> visually. So, an h2 used with a navigation bar used before the main h1
> of a page would not in my opinion fail WCAG. However, if an h4 was used
> before an h3 but visually communicated that it was a lesser importance
> or lower in the structure than that would be a failure.

That assumes that your information is presented in such a way that the
main headline comes first.

That is the most common way to do things, and there are good reasons for a
"pyramid" style where you start with a headline, but there are real use
cases for beginning with something that isn't the most important element.

On the other hand, if you are using e.g. h4 but presenting it visually as
something more important that what is represented in h3, I think you're
pretty clearly doing the wrong thing - not just for accessibility but HTML
in general.

> Best Regards,
>
> Jonathan
>
> --Jonathan AvilaChief Accessibility Officer
> SSB BART <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Phone 703.637.8957 Follow us: Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Blog |
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>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On
> Behalf Of Schafer, Carmen
> Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2015 1:13 PM
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Subject: [WebAIM] Heading order
>
> Dear Colleagues:
> We perform accessibility testing on a variety of websites and
> applications, and hope to get some feedback on how others handle a
> common accessibility concern, improper heading order.
>
> We have encountered several instances of improper heading order (e.g. an
> <h4> above an <h3>), but we can't seem to find a firm agreement as to a)
> whether improper heading order should be cited as an accessibility
> concern or usability/design concern or b) which, if any, of the WCAG 2.0
> Success Criteria covers improper heading order. We have read articles
> and attended webinars with conflicting information, but we know it can
> be an issue, particularly for screen reader users who navigate by
> headings.
>
> Would anyone be willing to weigh in and possibly give us a definitive
> answer so we make sure we have the fullest possible understanding of
> this issue and pass it on to developers and others.
>
> Thank you for your time and assistance.
>
> Carmen Schafer
> User Support Analyst, ACT Center
> Division of IT, University of Missouri
>
>
> > > at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> > > > > --
Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex
<EMAIL REMOVED> - - - Find more at http://yandex.com