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Re: Query on heading hierarchy

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From: Karlen Communications
Date: Mar 20, 2018 10:33AM

First a disclaimer: I support sequential headings. I "preach" sequential headings!

To the argument and the example given of following the visual representation of structure using headings that appear to be out of sequence. I've seen document authors choose a heading style/formatting because of the way it looks, not because it represents any type of structure. I've remediated documents in PDF and then received the Word document and what appeared visually as a smaller font or lower heading level was really a modified H2 with a smaller font than the H3, not a visual H3 which had a larger font than the H2. I've also remediated Word and PDF documents where all headings were the same size but had different attributes such as bold, italic and underline...sometimes all three.

As document authors we have to use sequential headings whenever possible and as document remediators we are tasked with providing a "logical reading order" or "logical structure to the document."

If we abdicate logical document structure/logical reading order, then we can just accept whatever heading Tags are produced in PDF and whatever headings are used in source applications. While this cuts down on the remediation time, it does not improve the accessibility of the content.

Taking this further, if we accept whatever headings are used in the document as the "right of the document author" then we should also be accepting any other structures as being the right of the author which again reduces remediation time to just looking for missing Alt Text...until we can make all images Artifacts in all applications.

There is a trend to winnow the accessibility of documents to its bare minimum. Not sure what is driving this trend but for me, this is a step backward not forward.

Part of accessible document design is "design." Part of our role as accessible document remediation professionals is to ensure a logical reading order/logical structure to digital content.

I would really like my role as an accessible document remediator to be obsolete because we've provided the training/education to document authors and we have the tools we need, not that we simply accept whatever is presented to us as "garbage in/garbage out."

Cheers, Karen