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From: Angela French
Date: Tue, Dec 02 2014 1:27PM
Subject: WCAG 2.0 validation
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Should this validation checker find missing headings ?

http://achecker.ca/checker/index.php

For example:

h1
h2
h4 (there was no h3)
h2




Angela French
Internet Specialist
State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
360-704-4316
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = <mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
www.checkoutacollege.com<;http://www.checkoutacollege.com>;
www.sbctc.edu<;http://www.sbctc.edu>;

From: Wloch, Rob
Date: Tue, Dec 02 2014 2:00PM
Subject: Re: WCAG 2.0 validation
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I'm not sure about that particular tool but this is definitely something that should be easily detectable by software as opposed to requiring human intervention.

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Tue, Dec 02 2014 2:03PM
Subject: Re: WCAG 2.0 validation
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Angela

Is a missing heading a WCAG violation?
1.3.1 does not specifically say that skipping a heading level is a violation.
It recommends using appropriate heading levels in its examples and
non-normative text, and it specifies that if text is in place of a
heading and formatted visually as a heading that it should be a
heading, but I have never failed a webpage on 1.3.1 due to missing
heading levels.

In fact, I believe there are cases where skipping a heading level may
be appropriate, such as an author's note or dedication, or text
transcriber note.
Customarily this type of information is located before chapter 1 in a
book, but definitely are less important than the chapter titles.
Here we assume the book title is an h1 and chapter titles are h2s.

Of course that is not what you asked, there may be reasons such as
specific customer needs, that forbid missing heading levels, (NFB NVA
certification requires this).

So I would not get my hopes up for achecker (or any standard WCAG
checker) to downright call out a violation for this, though they may
provide warnings.
Also, you need to consier ARIA headings.
<span role="heading" aria-level="3">This is the equivalent of an h3
heading</span>
This is legitimate code (even if I always try to encourage developers
to just use a heading), and checkers need to consider this as a
possibility.
Cheers
-B


On 12/2/14, Angela French < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Should this validation checker find missing headings ?
>
> http://achecker.ca/checker/index.php
>
> For example:
>
> h1
> h2
> h4 (there was no h3)
> h2
>
>
>
>
> Angela French
> Internet Specialist
> State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
> 360-704-4316
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = <mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> www.checkoutacollege.com<;http://www.checkoutacollege.com>;
> www.sbctc.edu<;http://www.sbctc.edu>;
>
> > > >


--
Work hard. Have fun. Make history.

From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Wed, Dec 03 2014 6:13AM
Subject: Re: WCAG 2.0 validation
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This is one of the reasons why using a tool that allows you to customize the rule set can be valuable.

While skipping heading levels isn't a violation, not skipping heading levels also conformant and is also strongly recommended by the WCAG specs. So, for your organization, you might want to call this a violation.

For me, it comes down to how close you want to get to that line between accessible and inaccessible. Do you want to be close to the line or well inside it?

From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Wed, Dec 03 2014 6:38AM
Subject: Re: WCAG 2.0 validation
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> This is one of the reasons why using a tool that allows you to customize the rule set can be valuable.

Our AMP platform allows for customization of rules and has something we call "guided automatic" to assist in this area. Basically, if a page has no headings that's a likely indicator of a failure but as you correctly point out it isn't necessarily a failure, i.e. if there are no visual headings on the page. So we categorize things like this as possible violations that require human inspection. Violations such as this are exposed to the tester but aren't automatically flagged -- it requires the human to say yes and then the violation is flagged. Similarly, we identify some issues as likely to apply to all pages in a set -- i.e. potential global violations. These categorizations combined with other tools such as the ability to mark a violation as a pattern and apply the violation and its associated notes to multiple pages assists in making the testing process more streamlined and efficient. This is an area where the community as a whole should focus attention to maximize our effo
rts.

Best Regards,

Jonathan