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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/