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Re: headings

for

From: John Foliot - WATS.ca
Date: Feb 18, 2005 6:44AM

ecampbell wrote:
> In my view, every webpage should have 1 and only 1 H1 element,
> reserved for the title of that page.
> Section headings within a page should use H2, etc.

Eoin,

I would caution here just a bit. There is no actual reason *not* to have
more than 1 in a page; as I previously said, it's about structural and
semantic logic, not "style". While under most circumstances I would agree
with you, and generally follow this convention, readers should be reminded
that it is *not* a standard, nor even a published "Best Practice" (at least
officially - internal guides not-withstanding). Consider the following, in
one HTML doc:

Contact us
Blah blah blah:
foo

Web Site Policies
At this time, we run our site like a Pirate ship - it's our rules!


Of course the discussion could be held that these two disparate headings
might have their own, unique "pages" (and that wouldn't be wrong), but there
is no reason structurally or logically to not have them both on the same
"page" either - it's for the most part a design/style issue.

>
> Using headings consistently will help all readers, as they will be
> styled in the same way, and will help people using screen readers,
> because JAWS for example, can extract a list of all the
> headings in a page
> and read them out, including the heading level of each one.
> e.g.
>

Exactly. They provide structural logic to your document(s), which as you
note allows for navigation. Giving your elements unique ids as well can
further aid in structural cohesiveness, and happily also provide a built in
method for web based navigation:

Our Web Site Policies (see above)

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)