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Re: Pdf heading levels

for

From: L Snider
Date: Dec 5, 2017 11:29AM

Hi Bevi,

You mentioned that future PDF/UA tags are under development that may help.
Is there any more information you can provide about this yet? I am curious
where this is going down the line.

Cheers

Lisa

On Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 10:59 AM, Chagnon | PubCom < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
wrote:

> Yes, you should care about the misordered sequence of headings. Jumping
> from H2 to H4 is considered an error.
>
> In situations like yours, we consider headings like Quick Tips or
> Checklist to be H2s (sometimes H3 is if fits the hierarchical structure).
> They are primary subheadings, not minor ones, and they are followed by
> related copy so they are headings, not body text.
>
> In some documents they may have a different appearance, such as a change
> of fonts, size, and color or in a separate text box to set them off from
> the rest of the page's content.
>
> It is compliant to have variations of heading styles in Word to achieve
> both the semantic tagging and visual formatting you need in the PDF.
>
> Example:
> "Heading 2" / <H2> tag for regular subheads in the main body text.
> "Heading 2 for Quick Tips" / <H2> for the tips box heading.
>
> Note that both headings end up with <H2> tags in the PDF, although their
> visual appearance can differ.
>
> There's no standard that says all H2 tags must look the same.
>
> Future PDF/UA tags are under development that will help make this easier
> and clearer to accomplish, but for now, this method works and passes
> accessibility checkers, especially HHS's. Of course, everything with HHS
> depends upon which tester reviews your file as they each have their own
> opinion about things like this.
>
> — — —
> Bevi Chagnon
> www.PubCom.com | Technologists for Accessible Design and Publishing
> print – digital – web – documents – pdfs – epubs
> consulting – training – development – design – sec. 508 services
> — — —
> Bevi Chagnon is a US delegate (ANSI) to the ISO for PDF and PDF/UA
> standards
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On
> Behalf Of Alan Zaitchik
> Sent: Tuesday, December 5, 2017 11:24 AM
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Subject: [WebAIM] Pdf heading levels
>
> Hi folks. I would appreciate your advice on the following.
>
> I am working on a Word to PDF conversion. The document systematically has
> a structure of (for example) Heading Level 2 material followed by a "Quick
> Tips" or "Checklist" paragraph followed by several Heading Level 3 blocks
> of material. This repeats throughout some 90 pages. The Heading 2 and
> Heading 3 blocks really make sense as such, but my question is what to do
> about the "Quick Tips" or "Checklist" blocks. They deserve to be listed in
> the Table of Contents on their own lines, and the easiest way to do this is
> to make them Heading Level 4 items. They are certainly not at the same
> semantic level of the H3 items. But then I get a complaint from the
> Accessibility Checker in Acrobat that the heading levels are incorrectly
> nested. Should I ignore this complaint? Should I not assign any heading
> level to these blocks but rather indicate in some other fashion that they
> are "asides" or "sidebars"? They're not, really—they are written as
> continuous text in the stream of the presentation. So the real semantic
> order genuinely is
> H1 – H2 – H4 – H3 – H3 – H4 – H3 – H3 etc.
> I would like to know if there is reason to care about the
> (mis)ordering/nesting of the heading levels.
>
> The client is ultimately HHS.
>
> Thanks,
> Alan
>
> Center For Social Innovation
> Needham, MA
>
> > > > >