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Thread: Nesting Heading levels in PDFs
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From: Alan Zaitchik
Date: Fri, Jul 07 2017 6:06AM
Subject: Nesting Heading levels in PDFs
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I'm working on PDFs where often a less important heading precedes a more
important heading in terms of its sequential placement on the page. To
correctly assign levels in terms of importance thus requires me to place
an <H2> ahead of the <H1> (for example) - or I must re-order the tags so
that the <H1> is ahead of the <H2> in the tag order even though it is
later in the (visual) reading order.
My understanding is that WCAG 2.0 does not forbid having an H2 tag ahead
of an H1 tag.(See
https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-navigation-mechanisms-descriptiv
e. Since our project is funded by HHS I also checked their requirements in
https://www.hhs.gov/web/section-508/making-files-accessible/checklist/pdf/i
ndex.html, where there is nothing explicitly stated about this.) Indeed,
although the Acrobat Accessibility Checker flags my re-ordering as
"incorrectly nested" it also notes in the Explanation that the strict
ordering is only an 'advisory guideline'.
Still... Can anyone confirm that my understanding is correct about these
matters? It would be reassuring to know that I can safely ignore Acrobat's
failure message and that HHS (or best practices in general) are
comfortable with prioritizing semantically correct leveling of headings
and keeping to the reading order ahead of brute force reordering heading
tags according to their levels and ignoring placement on the page.
Hope the above makes sense.
Thanks,
Alan
From: Ryan E. Benson
Date: Fri, Jul 07 2017 6:43AM
Subject: Re: Nesting Heading levels in PDFs
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Hello Alan
You are asking for an official opinion on the HHS checklist. I would advise
you to reach out to either the 508 Coordinator of the agency you are
working with or see if they have some support. A handful of agencies have
508 Help Desks, and the answers from the Coordinator or Help Desk would
trump any answer here. You can use the answer kere as a guide, but this
should not be treated as final even though I am a departmental and OPDIV
SME.
Headings must follow the usual structure, H1 before H2, and so on. I would
see if there is one line somewhere that could serve as a H1. Even though I
lean toward one or two H1s per html, I find myself using them slightly more
liberally in PDF - especially if I can't edit the base/source document. If
the source can be edited, I recommend doing that.
--
Ryan E. Benson
On Fri, Jul 7, 2017 at 8:06 AM, Alan Zaitchik < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
wrote:
> I'm working on PDFs where often a less important heading precedes a more
> important heading in terms of its sequential placement on the page. To
> correctly assign levels in terms of importance thus requires me to place
> an <H2> ahead of the <H1> (for example) - or I must re-order the tags so
> that the <H1> is ahead of the <H2> in the tag order even though it is
> later in the (visual) reading order.
> My understanding is that WCAG 2.0 does not forbid having an H2 tag ahead
> of an H1 tag.(See
> https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-navigation-
> mechanisms-descriptiv
> e. Since our project is funded by HHS I also checked their requirements in
> https://www.hhs.gov/web/section-508/making-files-
> accessible/checklist/pdf/i
> ndex.html, where there is nothing explicitly stated about this.) Indeed,
> although the Acrobat Accessibility Checker flags my re-ordering as
> "incorrectly nested" it also notes in the Explanation that the strict
> ordering is only an 'advisory guideline'.
> Still... Can anyone confirm that my understanding is correct about these
> matters? It would be reassuring to know that I can safely ignore Acrobat's
> failure message and that HHS (or best practices in general) are
> comfortable with prioritizing semantically correct leveling of headings
> and keeping to the reading order ahead of brute force reordering heading
> tags according to their levels and ignoring placement on the page.
> Hope the above makes sense.
> Thanks,
> Alan
>
> > > > >