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Re: Headings: requirements vs best practices

for

From: Alan Zaitchik
Date: Jun 22, 2016 7:16PM

Thank you to all who responded.

I guess there is both good and bad news for me in this thread. The bad
news is that I have been telling developers, incorrectly it turns out,
that we must have exactly one H1 on a page and that we cannot ³skip²
heading levels. I did this because the tools I have used for testing
accessibility have insisted on these requirements, both the ³Accessibility
Inspector² plugin for Firefox, which is more explicitly WCAG 2.0 oriented,
as well as the Firefox Accessibility Extension, which seems to me rather
like the Web Accessibility Toolbar I have used with IE. From what this
thread makes clear, there are no such requirements.

The good news, I guess, is that my insistence on these ³best practices"
for headings has in fact probably made the pages more accessible! Isn¹t
that our goal, anyway?

But it makes me wonder about all the other rules used by the AInspector
and Firefox Accessibility Extension and other tools, e.g. ARIA rules about
landmarks, roles, etc. We sometimes have to do contortions to avoid
nesting two <nav> sections one inside another (or, equivalently, placing a
DIV with a role of navigation inside another such DIV). Is this another
³false positive² of the AInspector which we should ignore? And so on.

A



On 6/22/16, 9:23 AM, "Srinivasu Chakravarthula" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
wrote:

>I completely agree.
>
>Regards,
>
>Srinivasu Chakravarthula - Twitter: http://twitter.com/CSrinivasu/
>Website: http://www.srinivasu.org | http://serveominclusion.com
>
>Let's create an inclusive web!
>
>Lead Accessibility Consultant, Informatica
>Hon. Joint Secretary, The National Association for the Blind, Karnataka
>Branch
>
>On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 6:19 PM, Marc Solomon < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>wrote:
>
>> In my opinion, placing the contents of the first <h1> before the
>> owner/publisher information in the page title would be preferred from a
>> usability perspective. Doing so would allow a screen reader user to
>> identify the purpose of the page more quickly. Hope this is an option
>>for
>> your project.
>> Best,
>> Marc
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On
>> Behalf Of Olaf Drümmer
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2016 3:02 AM
>> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Headings: requirements vs best practices
>>
>> As anything that can be done automatically will usually be more
>>consistent
>> and less error prone: would it be considered to automatically build the
>> content of a web page¹s <title> tag by using something that identifies
>>the
>> owner/publisher of the website, followed by the contents of the first
>><h1>
>> (assuming it reflects the intended on page title of the web page)?
>>
>> Also: when you say "AT will still announce them², how would that apply
>>to
>> AT other then screen readers?
>>
>> Olaf
>>
>>
>> > On 22.06.2016, at 01:19, Patrick H. Lauke < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > On 22/06/2016 00:04, Olaf Drümmer wrote:
>> >> Right, and the <title> tag goes in the head.
>> >>
>> >> But how does the <title> title relate to the <h1> title, if at all?
>> Which roles does <title> play? Does WCAG or anything else mandate
>>anything
>> about it? The <title> tag used to show up in the document window title,
>>but
>> these days document window titles are often gone (definitely on mobile
>> devices, and in tabbed window browsers they have become pretty useless
>> once several tabs are there).
>> >
>> > But AT will still announce them when, say, switching between tabs. For
>> this reason (as well as those mentioned by John Foliot) I'd say it's
>>still
>> relevant, in light of 2.4.2 Page titled.
>> >
>> > Ideally, <title> and <h1> should be complementary/reinforce each
>>other.
>> <title> would often include more information (e.g. the actual section of
>> the site you're in, as well as the actual site name), so it's not
>>really a
>> case of both having to have exact same content - just (as a best
>>practice)
>> that they shouldn't contradict each other, I'd say...
>> >
>> > P
>> > --
>> > Patrick H. Lauke
>> >
>> > www.splintered.co.uk | https://github.com/patrickhlauke
>> > http://flickr.com/photos/redux/ | http://redux.deviantart.com
>> > twitter: @patrick_h_lauke | skype: patrick_h_lauke
>> > >> > >> > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>> > >>
>> >> >> at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>> >> >> >> >> >>
>