title
sub title
what ever………………….

I’m still troubled, however, by a number of aspects:

1. The supposedly ‘simple’ approach of viewing a web page as part of a book
2. Jan Eric, a screenreader user, advocates a structural approach that is at odds with Kevin’s recommendations
3. The issue of how search engine algorithms regard heading structures today

The analogy of a web page being like part of a book is a bit facile. It’s more like an isolated part of a book with a TOC (table of contents) linking to other isolated pages, or maybe a magazine page with a main article and a number of ancillary ones and a TOC.

For this reason, Jan Eric’s point about making a distinction between the semantic structure of the content and the semantic structure of the other page content such as navigation seems to make sense.

Finally, whilst I understand the structure advocated by Kevin and reiterated by the previous moderated post (is there some stuff stripped out there?), I’m troubled by the outcome of the main article title becoming an h2: not so much from an accessibility perspective as from an SEO one. My understanding (and maybe this is flawed or outdated) is that right now the dominant search engine algorithms like to see the main content focus of the page to be present in both the title (critical) and the h1. Semantically, that makes good sense to me. As Autistic Cuckoo says:

The H1 should contain the document heading; something that explains what this page is about. Web pages exist in isolation. There is no ‘site’ concept in HTML.

Given the above, what then is the best way to structure headings for both accessibility and search engine friendliness?

Kevin, please clarify!

Hmmm, this may sound harsh….
But has anyone ever compared websites to books?

Same structure applies - nothing difficult or complicated in it.

= Book Title
= Chapter Title
= Section Title
Sub sections, comments, references etc.

What is so suprising in this?
Sorry, but yet again it is a standard case of people not thinking before doing.

You wouldn’t read a menu where each type of Meal or Food Type is the same heading size as the menu cover…. you’d think it stupid.

You wouldn’t look at a leaflet/pamphlet that had humongous text slapped all over the place - you’d deem it amaturish.

So why even conceive of it for your clients sites?

Please people, think… logic always comes through with a little thought.
Don’t view your pages with styling… view it as a simple, linnear document in black and white… see the order of what occurs and ask yourself

“does that make sense?”

If not - it is wrong.

Simple!

Best of luck to all those that wish to follow such examples.

As a useful hint (rather than this being viewed as a whinge!)…

= Site Title (the company name etc,)
= Main sections (Main Nav, Sub Nav, Content, Footer etc.)
= Sub Sections (Mebnu1, Menu2, Content section etc.)
= Titles… (Sub titles for the Content etc.)
= Not likely to be used unless you are referencing other works.

Nothing complicated or clever!

Whizzy-Whizz Books Ltd.

Main Nav

Site Nav

Site Links!

Store Nav

Store Links!

Main Content (could be Title for that page!)

If you have sub sections

There - follow that and you’re laughing.
As to using Keywords within tags… not sure on that one…
Think of Screen Readers etc.
Would you want to read a Menu that went…

MENU - Main Courses, Desserts, Drinks
MAIN COURSES - Roasts, Vegetarian, Vegain, Jacket Potatoes etc.
DESSETS - Ice cream, Steamed Puddings etc.

NO - you wouldn’t!
You expect a Title to be that - A TITLE!!!!!!
No funny Comments, Characters or strange words appearing afterwords!

So again, think Logically!

1. content as in “article”
2. the rest as in “navigation” or other sections

I don’t think the content needs to be discussed.

As a screenreader user I find differing concepts for the rest of the page difficult to learn on different web sites. OK driving all headings is one way to get through, but I usually am not able to aim at particular parts of the navigation, because the headings may be coded with h1, h2 or something else such as p or span.

I find it important, that all headings in navigation should be identical. I also think they should not conflict with content headings.

What do we do? We set all headings which have nothing to do with the content to h6. This has three reasons:

1. h6 is out of the content heading hierarchie (i.e. it functions as a label, which is missing in HTML 4 and XHTML 1) for lists or divisions.
2. it is easy to use and also to remember. Incidentally switching frames and similar is done with F6.
3. It is not only visible headings we are talking about. Information should be grouped and labeled, e.g. a navigation is a list and the label? Yes, an invisible text. For practical reasons a heading is suitable, because a screenreader can jump to it.

We have done this on a number of German sites since 2005.

My gut says that an H1 sitename is fine as not all web pages are sites per se and a sitename is in some sense a parent heading for all that will follow just as if I published an “unbranded” one page technical paper with the H1 as the document title (as the page would lack a “sitename”).

For right now, I have a title of course, an H1 sitename and a

, using the p tag instead of an H2 which I had been using (per some HTML Dog article I read at one point).

With this setup, the H2 ends up being my defacto page/parent section header.

Taking this compromise further and wrapping the sitename with

might be the the way to go, that way the H1 can be left for the actual page title like “Contact”, “About” or whatever.

I am still kickin’ the tires on this one…

This wouldn’t be an unreasonable assumption to make, and certainly the W3C’s HTML Validator would be perfectly happy with it, but in fact it seriously hurts the accessibility of your site.

In what way does this hinder access to a site? I understand why you think that it does not conform with the guidelines, but the ultimate test is the end user, not a W3C spec.

I too spent a bit of time working out how it all should fit together and it’s nice to see that your article backs up my approach. (phewww… you never can be too sure)

Andrew