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RE: Navigation lists and headers - best practise?

for

From: Moore, Michael
Date: Aug 25, 2006 9:40AM

Jon,

My comments are in-line below:


These are the header rules we are using with the Functional
Accessibility Evaluator[1]:

Section Headings
Rule 1: Header elements should preceed lists that are primarily links
(Navigation bars)
Good Idea

Rule 2: Each page should have a unique h1 element and header elements
that follow it should be properly nested.
<comment>
Not necessary, may not be desirable particularly when seeking to meet
the requirements of Rule 1, unless I misunderstand and you do allow a
freestanding h2 outside of the h1 structure.</comment>

Rule 3: The percentage of text content contained in header elements
(h1..h6) should range between approximately 3 and 9.
<comment>
Not sure I understand this, if the desire is to keep the headings
succinct then there may be a better measure. If the idea is to make
sure that each block of content is at least 10 times that of the length
of its header that does not seem to encourage an efficient writing
style. Of course for folks as wordy as me that would not be a problem
;)</comment>

Rule 4: H1 content should be a subset of the TITLE element content
<comment>
I don't agree with this either. <title>My Web Site: Home</title>
<h1>Welcome to My Web Site</h1> These are intersecting sets. A better
rule would be H1 content should include key words contained in the
title.</comment>

Rule 5: There should be no more than 2 H1 on a web resource
<comment>
Some would argue 1, I would argue that the printable version of a manual
may have need for many more. This would be nice to be a configurable
feature within the tool.</comment>


[1] Functional Web Accessibility Evaluator http://fae.cita.uiuc.edu

This is really one of the best automated tools that I have
used.</shameless plug>

Mike