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Re: Heading structure

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From: Maupin, Brennan Polaris McCaffrey - maupinbp
Date: Mar 11, 2019 7:02AM

I've been running into this a lot personally. I also have been focusing on 1.3.1 compliance when I tell people around me that it is an issue.

My problem is that, depending on how your website is made and managed, web content creators will may heading levels based off of their visual appearance rather than page structure.

When I justify heading levels to people I cite guideline 141 which states that
"To facilitate navigation and understanding of overall document structure, authors should use headings that are properly nested (e.g., h1 followed by h2, h2 followed by h2 or h3, h3 followed by h3 or h4, etc.)." [1]

An important note that is in line with Glen's comments; their tutorial [2] reinforces that headings should be in order, but states that
"In fixed sections of the page, for example in sidebars, the heading ranks should not change depending on the ranks in the content area. In those cases, consistency across pages is more important."

Someone tell me if I am wrong, (I am new to this,) but I typically feel that if someone is using headings out of order for *main content* on a page, as opposed to elements that are consistent to a set of pages (e.g. navigation bar, sidebar, contact info), in such cases the headings should be fixed. Is that in line with what you all practice?

Brennan

[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/G141.html
[2] https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/page-structure/headings/


-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of glen walker
Sent: Saturday, March 9, 2019 11:17 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Heading structure

I agree with Patrick on 1.3.1 but be careful that you don't automatically flag an error just because the heading levels aren't in order. 1.3.1 just says you can determine the "structure, and relationships". It doesn't say the headings must be in order (although that's generally the recommendation).

I've seen pages where an H1 is not the first heading on a page (in the DOM) but it made perfect sense so wasn't an error. I believe it had something to do with the H1 in the <main> but the <header> or left <nav> had a sub-heading in it.

And sometimes skipping a level is ok too. If you have a common pattern on your pages where you have H1-H3 on the main part of the page then H4 in the footer, but then you have a page that doesn't have as much info so it only has H1 and H2, the footer should still be H4 so that it's consistent with the other pages. You skipped H3 but that's ok. Again, the "structure, and relationships" are understood so it passes 1.3.1.

Glen