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Re: Is NVDA using the wrong type of widget (tree) to show the headings on a page?

for

From: Isabel Holdsworth
Date: Mar 22, 2019 6:17AM


IMO the importance of heading levels depends very much on the type of
content. If headings are being used to chunk up a page, their levels
arguably don't matter very much. But if they're part of a long or
complex document, levels can matter a great deal. Say, for example, if
I were reading through a set of clauses most of whose headings were at
level 2, and I was familiar with one clause and wanted to jump to the
next, whose heading happened to be at level 3, I could easily miss out
on reading a whole clause.

Shall we add this to the "subjective" pile with so much else in the
accessibility arena? :-)

Cheers, Isabel

On 16/03/2019, glen walker < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> My impression is that the correctness of heading levels has virtually no
> effect on task completion or efficiency. By contrast, completion and
> efficiency are substantially affected if content is not marked up as a
> heading when it should be, or vice versa.
>
> Interesting idea. So you think as long as the main h1 is tagged correctly,
> all remaining sub-headings, whether h2, h3, h4, don't really matter what
> level they are as long as they're read has headings?
>
> I think that might be slightly true for sighted users too. That is, you
> see the main big heading (h1) and then scan/scroll the page to see the
> sub-headings to get an idea of what's on the page, but you're scanning
> quickly and don't really care if the sub-headings are h2, h3, or h4 or of
> different font sizes and weight. But without headings (and their
> associated styles) at all, it would all look like plain text and be harder
> to scan.
> > > > >