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Re: headings

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From: michael.brockington
Date: Feb 21, 2005 3:40AM

> -----Original Message-----
> From: lists38 [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
> Sent: 18 February 2005 22:07
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] headings
>
> The Sun and the Daily Mail have very many readers indeed, and
> are widely
> known publications.
> Should we replicate 1:1 what we read there or check it first by
> comparing it with other publications - after all that many
> readers can't
> all be wrong, or?
> Can we determine the quality of a web site or how well run
> the business
> is by looking at it or how known it is?
> Can we determine if the facts are true and the editorial
> staff is up to
> scratch?

The reputation of a site and its authors is the only thing that we do have
to go on.
The basic principle is the same as in print - if you are tiny then you are
not worth suing - if you are a large target then you need to make sure that
you don't libel anyone.

> If the branding of the site is the only indicator, then I very much
> doubt we can.
Not the branding - the actual brand.
And whether it's perfect or not is not the point - the point is that the
Brand is important to the site owner in many, many cases, both for large and
small sites. I don't think that your opinion that everyone gives the same
weight to every site (which we all know is rubbish) affects the sites' owners
desire to have the Brand noticed. To them it is important, and I see no issue
with it therefore being used as the content for an H1.
If you want to put something else there then that is fine.

> A lot of excellent articles on the web come in a very poor
> wrapping and
> most up-to-date technical information in personal blogs.
So does plenty of mis-information.

> The new thing about the web as a media was and is that you
> can deliver
> information without a shiny wrapper and still find readers and spur
> discussion - as it is not a one way media.
Email is two-way, HTML certainly is not.


> And how many marketing people have told us with their
> advertising words
> during the dotcom boom that their site is the most reliable
> and best and
> their brand is the world leader?
> How many people got laid of at all the magazines being the best and
> newest and most hip reporting about them?
> Sorry, but good marketing and brand awareness as an indicator
> of great
> content is like believing the second hand car dealer when he praises
> the shiny body that the engine is in pristine condition, too.
I agree, but you seem to be saying that the car dealer is not allowed to
polish his cars' bodies because the engine is more important. My car is
falling apart at the seems, but the engine still runs fine.


> ... If your text does not need a proper
> structure, it
> most probably is not worth an own document.

I can't think of a polite answer to that!


> That is three levels. How about the fourth one? There is no
> H7 and you
> cannot restart at H1.

The W3C defines 6 levels as being the maximum you should use in any one
document - I can't believe that you would advocate exceeding that on this
forum of all places? I'm sure that would cause problems for those with
cognitive issues so I would never dream of it, I don't think I have ever gone
past H4.

> >
> A bold statement. Take CDRs for example. Any online shop will feature
> about 30 different brands. When you follow the sales trail
> back to the
> press in China there are about 4 companies left. Is Ritek the
> brand to
> trust or Memorex who print their name on it?
How are you going to make a decision if you don't know any brand at all?
I'm not a massive fan of capitalism, but that's the way that it works. If we
lived in Utopia then brand would not be an issue, but then neither would
accessibility.

> http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/02/18/limiting.lawsuits.ap/index.html
> The title of the article is the h1, I don't see Cnn.com
Politics ...

Do you own documents any way that you want, but showing me one single site on
the web that does things that way does not prove that the site name in an H1
causes any accessibility problems.
Incidentally, I don't think that using a tables based site that jumps from H1
straight to H3, presumably purely for styling reasons:
Bush signs class-action bill into law
Legislation will limit 'lawsuit abuse,' backers say
helps your point.


> The site structure should be presented to me as a interactive element of>
the page. What good is it to know I am in the plush toys section when I>
cannot navigate back up to the toys section or drill further down to the>
frogs or giraffes?
You said earlier that the site structure was not part of the document
structure, and should be inferred from the navigation, have you changed your
mind?


> The site structure is represented in the navigation - the global one and>
aided by tools like a breadcrumb navigation and links to similar content.>
You can repeat it, but not at the cost of internal structure of the
> current document.

I think you mean that you should repeat it _in order to enhance the semantic
structure_ of the document.


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