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Re: Citations and scientific publications: Invisible headings?

for

From: glen walker
Date: May 13, 2022 12:18PM

From a sighted user's perspective, I find style 1 easier to scan. The
authors are one paragraph and then there's a new line with the journal name
that starts with italics. I don't like the second style because I have to
hunt for the period at the end of the author list to find the journal name.

So using the first style, the bold large font is obviously a heading. (I'm
not sure what that text is called. It's just under the horizontal line
separating each group.)

The list of authors doesn't necessarily need a heading but you could
certainly have a hidden <h3>authors</h3> (assuming the main text is an
<h2>). Since the list of authors is directly after the main text, it's
easy to arrow down with a screen reader to that part so a heading doesn't
buy you a whole lot.

Is it important for someone to know how many authors there are? Since it's
just a comma separated list, I'm guessing the number doesn't matter because
there isn't an easy way to count them up. Otherwise it would be a numbered
list. But you could make it an <ul> (with display:inline) and
::after:content text with a comma (except the last author) and the screen
reader user would know how many authors there are. But if that's important
information, everyone should have access to it.

The journal name in italics after the authors might benefit from some kind
of heading or landmark to make it easier to get through all the author
names, although a "next paragraph" screen reader shortcut key would also
work.

The links don't necessarily need a heading/landmark either since the TAB
key will take you to them. But you'd have to be listening for "DOI" (which
might be announced as separate letters, "D O I", or it might be announced
as a word, "doy") to know when the links for the next section start,
especially since the "abstract" link may or may not exist as the last
link. So an invisible heading might be helpful.

I didn't follow why having invisible headings would invalidate the citation.

(Note that from a WebAIM archive perspective for this discussion, your
attachments will be removed so there won't be a visual hint as to what your
citation formatting looks like. I sort of described it in my first
paragraph.)