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Re: [EXTERNAL] heading question

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From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Dec 16, 2019 7:41AM

It's also likely that for many simple web pages the heading level isn't as important -- especially if the heading text is explanatory and the progression of headings implies meaning. In other cases the general order of the heading levels may be enough -- h3 may not come directly have an h1 but most folks would agree that an h3 is of less importance or a sub section. I'd agree with Birkir that landmarks have the potential to be better in many situations. For example, using just heading levels the main part of a page would have an h1 and the sections of a footer would have to have h2 to conform to the level approach. However, you don't have any details that they are in the footer and they actually probably should be less important than an h2 -- for example an h4. This gets into the messy world of headings where they denote structure but also can communicate importance in terms of weight. Most web pages don't visually show the headings needed for complete levels for screen re
aders and this would necessitate adding off-screen headings.

In terms of other types of document such as legal, financial, or research documents where the heading text is not clear and the order heading levels is necessary to understand the content then the order is absolutely needed in order to understand the relationship of text and headings. So it really depends on the context and that is why the WCAG criteria is flexible in determining when it is a failure or not.

Jonathan