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Re: Query on heading hierarchy

for

From: glen walker
Date: Mar 20, 2018 10:58AM

I would guess that the majority of a11y sme's would prefer sequential
headings but it's not against wcag to not have them. I think that was the
main point.


On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 10:33 AM, Karlen Communications <
<EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> 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
>
>
>