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From: Miller, Steve MR 1
Date: Mon, Apr 16 2012 5:49PM
Subject: Headings and WCAG2 compliance (1.3.1) [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
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UNCLASSIFIED

Could someone please advise whether a page containing two <h1> tags is WCAG2 compliant?

Technically to follow the principles of semantic markup and a hierarchical structure, a <H1> tag should not be the child of another <H1> tag.

Also and probably more important (the subject of many robust discussions) - can site navigation elements be marked up as headings? This seems to fail WCAG2 compliance as the navigation heading technically does not belong to (is a child of) the Content heading. Although useful having a list of navigation elements available through the headings, if a user is not familiar with the site then they are unlikely to differentiate content from navigation, or at least find it very confusing.

Cheers

Steven Miller
Web Governance
Web Information Capability Team
FOI and Information Management
Department of Defence
Campbell Park, Canberra ACT 2600 AUSTRALIA

02 6266 4380


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From: Jared Smith
Date: Mon, Apr 16 2012 6:50PM
Subject: Re: Headings and WCAG2 compliance (1.3.1) [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
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On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 5:49 PM, Miller, Steve MR 1 wrote:

> Could someone please advise whether a page containing two <h1> tags is WCAG2 compliant?

There is no requirement in WCAG 2.0 that a page have only one <h1>. In
fact, there's no requirement in WCAG that a page have a logical
heading structure at all. A page generally must have headings to
identify sections, but there's nothing that requires them to be of an
appropriate level.

> Technically to follow the principles of semantic markup and a hierarchical structure, a <H1> tag should not be the child of another <H1> tag.

When you consider a document outline, an <h1> can't really be a child
of another <h1>. It would always be a sibling (i.e., at the same level
as any other <h1>).

Most pages should have one <h1> (except the very rare instance of two
or more main title headings), but it's certainly not a requirement of
WCAG.

If you're talking HTML5, every heading on the page could be an <h1>
and it could be very accessible and compliant.

> Also and probably more important (the subject of many robust discussions) - can site navigation elements be marked up as headings?

Can you provide an example or description of what you mean? I think
this would generally be an odd presentation, though logos are commonly
headings and one could consider that a "site navigation element".

Jared

From: Duff Johnson
Date: Mon, Apr 16 2012 7:08PM
Subject: Re: Headings and WCAG2 compliance (1.3.1) [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
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Jared,

On Apr 16, 2012, at 8:50 PM, Jared Smith wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 5:49 PM, Miller, Steve MR 1 wrote:
>
>> Could someone please advise whether a page containing two <h1> tags is WCAG2 compliant?
>
> There is no requirement in WCAG 2.0 that a page have only one <h1>. In
> fact, there's no requirement in WCAG that a page have a logical
> heading structure at all. A page generally must have headings to
> identify sections, but there's nothing that requires them to be of an
> appropriate level.

Can you explain this claim? I've read Success Criterion 1.3.1 about 50 times in the last three weeks trying to answer this question.

I get that the authors of WCAG 2.0 take the view that 1.3.1 does not require appropriate heading levels. What I don't understand (maybe I'm just dumb) is how the actual TEXT of 1.3.1 supports this view. Secondarily, I don't understand why ignoring heading levels would be acceptable any more than would reading a nested list as if it wasn't nested (which everyone agrees is a no-no).

Two questions...

- If "structure and relationships" are to be "programmatically determined" how can this occur in the case of content in which heading levels don't reflect the document's actual structure?

- Let's say we have some content that IS appropriately structured. Can a user agent that understands headings but ignores levels still comply with WCAG 2.0?

Best regards,

Duff Johnson

President, NetCentric US
ISO 32000 Intl. Project Co-Leader, US Chair
ISO 14289 US Chair
PDF Association Vice-Chair

Office: +1 617 401 8140
Mobile: +1 617 283 4226
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From: Jared Smith
Date: Mon, Apr 16 2012 7:29PM
Subject: Re: Headings and WCAG2 compliance (1.3.1) [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
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On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 7:08 PM, Duff Johnson wrote:

> I get that the authors of WCAG 2.0 take the view that 1.3.1 does not require appropriate heading levels. What I don't understand (maybe I'm just dumb) is how the actual TEXT of 1.3.1 supports this view.

I agree with you. The text of 1.3.1 certainly would suggest a logical
heading level. It's the supporting materials that clarify (to me at
least) that such is not really a requirement.

> Secondarily, I don't understand why ignoring heading levels would be acceptable any more than would reading a nested list as if it wasn't nested (which everyone agrees is a no-no).

I'm with you on this one. It's certainly bad practice. I was just
pointing out that it doesn't seem to be absolutely required for WCAG
conformance.

> - If "structure and relationships" are to be "programmatically determined" how can this occur in the case of content in which heading levels don't reflect the document's actual structure?

I interpret the relevant techniques to simply require that headings
should be used, not that the overall document structure be logical. In
other words, I believe it only requires a relationship between a
content "chunk" and its own heading, not a logical relationship
between "chunks"/headings.

> Can a user agent that understands headings but ignores levels still comply with WCAG 2.0?

I don't know. The user agent is pretty much irrelevant to WCAG
conformance. With that said, I agree that it's hard to call something
compliant when the implementation of that compliance results in
terrible accessibility.

The beauty of WCAG is that if you think it's a requirement, it can be.
If you don't think it's required, it's not. I prefer to err on the
side of better accessibility and would thus specify a logical heading
structure to be WCAG conformant, despite what the details of WCAG
suggest.

I'm thinking I shouldn't have played devil's advocate on this one. :-)

Jared

From: Ryan E. Benson
Date: Mon, Apr 16 2012 7:51PM
Subject: Re: Headings and WCAG2 compliance (1.3.1) [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
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>> Can a user agent that understands headings but ignores levels still comply with WCAG 2.0?
>
> I don't know. The user agent is pretty much irrelevant to WCAG
> conformance. With that said, I agree that it's hard to call something
> compliant when the implementation of that compliance results in
> terrible accessibility.

I thought I saw an article based on a survey, that said screen readers
users refer hierarchy over a page that uses them randomly. And they
prefer a page that has headings without hierarchy (randomly) over a
page without any at all.

--
Ryan E. Benson



On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 9:29 PM, Jared Smith < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 7:08 PM, Duff Johnson wrote:
>
>> I get that the authors of WCAG 2.0 take the view that 1.3.1 does not require appropriate heading levels. What I don't understand (maybe I'm just dumb) is how the actual TEXT of 1.3.1 supports this view.
>
> I agree with you. The text of 1.3.1 certainly would suggest a logical
> heading level. It's the supporting materials that clarify (to me at
> least) that such is not really a requirement.
>
>> Secondarily, I don't understand why ignoring heading levels would be acceptable any more than would reading a nested list as if it wasn't nested (which everyone agrees is a no-no).
>
> I'm with you on this one. It's certainly bad practice. I was just
> pointing out that it doesn't seem to be absolutely required for WCAG
> conformance.
>
>> - If "structure and relationships" are to be "programmatically determined" how can this occur in the case of content in which heading levels don't reflect the document's actual structure?
>
> I interpret the relevant techniques to simply require that headings
> should be used, not that the overall document structure be logical. In
> other words, I believe it only requires a relationship between a
> content "chunk" and its own heading, not a logical relationship
> between "chunks"/headings.
>
>> Can a user agent that understands headings but ignores levels still comply with WCAG 2.0?
>
> I don't know. The user agent is pretty much irrelevant to WCAG
> conformance. With that said, I agree that it's hard to call something
> compliant when the implementation of that compliance results in
> terrible accessibility.
>
> The beauty of WCAG is that if you think it's a requirement, it can be.
> If you don't think it's required, it's not. I prefer to err on the
> side of better accessibility and would thus specify a logical heading
> structure to be WCAG conformant, despite what the details of WCAG
> suggest.
>
> I'm thinking I shouldn't have played devil's advocate on this one. :-)
>
> Jared
> > >

From: Duff Johnson
Date: Mon, Apr 16 2012 8:20PM
Subject: Re: Headings and WCAG2 compliance (1.3.1) [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
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On Apr 16, 2012, at 9:29 PM, Jared Smith wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 7:08 PM, Duff Johnson wrote:
>
>> I get that the authors of WCAG 2.0 take the view that 1.3.1 does not require appropriate heading levels. What I don't understand (maybe I'm just dumb) is how the actual TEXT of 1.3.1 supports this view.
>
> I agree with you. The text of 1.3.1 certainly would suggest a logical
> heading level. It's the supporting materials that clarify (to me at
> least) that such is not really a requirement.

If WCAG 2.0 is a normative standard, the normative text always and without exception trumps the informative text.

I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that one might interpret informative text to contradict normative text - and then follow the informative.

>> Secondarily, I don't understand why ignoring heading levels would be acceptable any more than would reading a nested list as if it wasn't nested (which everyone agrees is a no-no).
>
> I'm with you on this one. It's certainly bad practice. I was just
> pointing out that it doesn't seem to be absolutely required for WCAG
> conformance.

Since the source of the notion that it's not "absolutely required" is informative text that appears to be at cross-purposes with the normative, I'm not sure this is a reasonable conclusion.

If heading levels don't matter (normatively), than why do nested lists matter? It's essentially the same problem. If 1.3.1 applies to lists, why not to the document itself?

>> - If "structure and relationships" are to be "programmatically determined" how can this occur in the case of content in which heading levels don't reflect the document's actual structure?
>
> I interpret the relevant techniques to simply require that headings
> should be used, not that the overall document structure be logical. In
> other words, I believe it only requires a relationship between a
> content "chunk" and its own heading, not a logical relationship
> between "chunks"/headings.

This is interesting, but seems arbitrary to me, and I can't locate the distinction you are drawing in the supporting docs.

I don't see how the relationships between headings could be any less significant to document navigability than the relationship between a heading and the content it heads.

After all, headings also head headings, right?

>> Can a user agent that understands headings but ignores levels still comply with WCAG 2.0?
>
> I don't know. The user agent is pretty much irrelevant to WCAG
> conformance. With that said, I agree that it's hard to call something
> compliant when the implementation of that compliance results in
> terrible accessibility.

This is the exact problem, well put!

> The beauty of WCAG is that if you think it's a requirement, it can be.
> If you don't think it's required, it's not.

"Beauty", eh?

OUCH! That's a really mean thing to say about a normative standard!

;-)

> I prefer to err on the
> side of better accessibility and would thus specify a logical heading
> structure to be WCAG conformant, despite what the details of WCAG
> suggest.

The question is: can NON-logical structure be WCAG 2.0 conforming?

I don't see how the answer can be "yes" and the WCAG mission still be honored. Ok, I can see letting shorter web-pages get away with it because they generally have so few headings in any case… but longer documents? No way.

My recent article on the subject….

http://www.commonlook.com/heading-levels-navigation-or-decoration

Duff.

From: Jared Smith
Date: Fri, Apr 20 2012 8:22AM
Subject: Re: Headings and WCAG2 compliance (1.3.1) [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
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On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 8:20 PM, Duff Johnson wrote:

>> The beauty of WCAG is that if you think it's a requirement, it can be.
>> If you don't think it's required, it's not.
>
> "Beauty", eh?
>
> OUCH! That's a really mean thing to say about a normative standard!

Duff prompted me to respond to this. The normative language of WCAG is
what matters. The listed techniques and failures are not normative,
but can help you determine conformance to the normative success
criteria. Techniques/failures are not binding - you could have a
failure yet still be conformant, for example.

In this case, we've documented how a logical heading structure might
be required and how it might not be required based on ones
interpretation of WCAG. If you think that logical headings are
required despite the fact that the supporting documentation doesn't
suggest this, then you should probably implement logical headings to
be WCAG conformant. If you don't think that logical headings are
required because there are no techniques/failures that require them,
then you should probably implement them anyway because they are good
for accessibility, but by your own interpretation, you aren't required
to in order to be WCAG conformant.

Jared