WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: headings

for

From: michael.brockington
Date: Feb 21, 2005 8:26AM

> -----Original Message-----
> From: jkorpela [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
> Sent: 21 February 2005 15:03
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] headings
>
> Which simple question? I see no question.
I must have trimmed the wrong bit somewhere.
The question was "why is it wrong?"

> If you mean the
> question whether it is correct (from the accessibility
> perspective, I presume) to use h1 as the name of the site
> (irrespectively of the page's content), then the above
> statement is a very direct answer to it.
Direct, but not meaningful.

> If you mean
> arguments in favor of that answer, several arguments have been given.
But with very little to back them up.

> ...
> From some other postings in this discussion, I guess you
> might be looking for an explicit statement in WAI guidelines
> against using h1 as site name. I think the points already
> made have contained a reference to the guideline that tells
> authors to use logical markup according to specifications.
Exactly, it says "according to specifications" Those specifications do not
appear to contradict my suggested use of H1 to contain the site name.

> If
> you want something even more explicit, you are asking for too
> much.
I usually do ask for too much, but then so does my boss...


> Besides, we should aim at making pages accessible to
> people, not at complying with accessibility principles.
Do you mean that useability should take preference over accessibility?

>
> The simple fact that h1 will be presented, by default (and we
> can never be sure of being able to override the defaults) in
> a very prominent manner, such as slow voice and considerable
> pause after (or very large font and a bottom margin), should
> deter us from using it for anything else than a first-level
> heading that describes the _page_ and therefore deserves such
> presentation.
I fully accept that principle - I was not advocating that a site should place
its name in an H1 then style it as 9point text, I was not suggesting that
the H1 header be abused for visual effect.
I _was_ stating that for many sites the site name is the most important
'feature' of the page. That is not open to debate here - that is between us
and our bosses/clients (and their marketing people). Given that fact, is
there any reason not to make it an H1?
Conversely, if the site name is not a header, does AT have any standardised
way of advising the user on what site they are currently? Some text in a
random div seems a very poor replacement for the large banners that are
typical for a site user.

Mike


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