WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: which guideline to empty headers go against?

for

From: Angela French
Date: Nov 21, 2016 4:32PM


Our editors are inadvertently inserting them when using our CMS and the built-in accessibility checker (based on a.checker) is not flagging them. I'm trying to communicate with our CMS support person that it should.

Angela French

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of JP Jamous
Sent: Monday, November 21, 2016 3:29 PM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] which guideline to empty headers go against?

It does not violate any WCAG SC, but it is a bad UX. If I reach this with a screen reader and it says nothing, I am going to conclude one of 2 things.

1. Either it has a background image loading from a CSS file Or 2. Some stupid developer forgot it there, which is bad coding.

You can use a couple of level A SC against it.

1. There is an error with the web site code.
2. It was not made with accessibility in mind.

I forgot the exact SC numbers for those but they are both level A SCs.

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Angela French
Sent: Monday, November 21, 2016 5:21 PM
To: WebAim Forum ( <EMAIL REMOVED> ) < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [WebAIM] which guideline to empty headers go against?

I have always considered it an accessibility issue for a page to have empty headings such as <h2>&nbsp;</h2>

Does this break any particular guideline?

Angela French
Internet/Intranet Specialist
Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
360-704-4316
<EMAIL REMOVED> <mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> >
www.sbctc.edu<;http://www.sbctc.edu/>;