WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Heading structure

for

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Mar 11, 2019 8:29AM

On 11/03/2019 13:02, Maupin, Brennan Polaris McCaffrey - maupinbp wrote:
[...]
> 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]

Noting here that it's not a guideline (which is normative), but a
technique (which is informative, so holds no formal weight).

Also, note the use of "should" rather than "must".

Of course, in a formal evaluation, you're free to mark 1.3.1 as a FAIL,
but it's a very harsh interpretation I'd say (particularly in situations
where a site may have far bigger fish to fry / far more fundamental
problems). It's what I sometimes would call a "soft fail", as in "nobody
dies because of it, but yes ideally it should really be fixed".

In my opinion, of course.

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

www.splintered.co.uk | https://github.com/patrickhlauke
http://flickr.com/photos/redux/ | http://redux.deviantart.com
twitter: @patrick_h_lauke | skype: patrick_h_lauke