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Re: headings

for

From: John Foliot - WATS.ca
Date: Feb 17, 2005 5:57PM

glenda wrote:
> ok, now I'm getting confused. If there is no yes/no answer,
> is there a best
> practice?
>

Apply semantic logic.

Look, there *is* no right and wrong, because each circumstance dictates a
unique response. A collection of web pages constituting an "article" or
other longer "paper" requires that it be "broken up", in part to address
other accessibility / usability issues. As such, it may very well be
necessary that at the "top" of one of your pages that the starting tag
may be an or even an . This in and of itself is not wrong. This
same document collection might take the pattern of:







*document break*




*document break*

....etc. There is nothing *wrong* or invalid with this as long as the
semantic structure is "correct". Which requires logic and perception, and a
healthy dose of human decision making.

I do not recall anywhere that the W3C or any other group advocates that each
page "must" include an ; by convention most of my "sections" will start
with an , but that's just me ;)

Think of it this way: when authoring Word documents, you can use the
"styles" feature (in fact you should be if you want more accessible PDF's,
but I digress). One of the advantages of doing this however is that Word
can then "auto-create" your Index/Table of Contents. When it does so, it
"styles" the entries in the ToC according to... Their semantic
structure/logic. But as you read the individual 8.5 X 11 (A4) pages, the
top of each page does not *require* the primary heading of the document,
unless of course you choose to provide it in the [Header]. This type of
semantic logic in HTML is recommended by implementing the
element; many sites also provide a visual "breadcrumb" trail further
re-enforcing the users spatial location within the document set.

Hope this helps

JF
--
John Foliot <EMAIL REMOVED>
Web Accessibility Specialist / Co-founder of WATS.ca
Web Accessibility Testing and Services
http://www.wats.ca 1.866.932.4878 (North America)