Comments on: Hidden barriers: multiple links in headings

By: Richard Warren

Richard Warren — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:21:19 +0000

Headings (h1 to h6) should only contain the relevant text of that heading. We were doing a demo last month with Supernova on an elderly laptop and went to a site that included images in the heading codes. The laptop siezed up and had to be re-booted because the images used up all the available cache when we asked for a list of page headings.

Please keep it simple and use the codes only for what they are supposed to be used for.
Richard

By: AlastairC

AlastairC — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:10:05 +0000

Whilst I agree with comments about the poor markup cases highlighted, this:
“screen readers announce the beginning, the end and the level of each heading, whatever is inside the opening and closing tags gets announced as a single item.”
Sounds like a bug, similar to the bug that created the ‘more than whitespace’ checkpoint from yesteryear.

By: Jon Gibbins

Jon Gibbins — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:21:15 +0000

Hi Bim. What screen reader and browser are you using to get these results? I understand the problem, but I cannot replicate it using JAWS 9 and IE 7. As I tab through the links in a single heading I hear “my link text 1 heading level 1 link” then “my link text 2 heading level 1 link” then “my link text 3 heading level 1 link”. dotjay Jon

By: Ben 'Cerbera' Millard

Ben 'Cerbera' Millard — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:15:24 +0000

I just found a legitimate use-case for 2 links in a heading. Specifically, it’s the

that starts “Social network portability”.

By: Ben 'Cerbera' Millard

Ben 'Cerbera' Millard — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:19:16 +0000

This was briefly discussed on #whatwg. Does reading the entire heading’s content when a link in a heading get focus work well most of the time? My initial reaction is that it’s a bug but maybe it provides useful context on some websites you can name?

By: Ben 'Cerbera' Millard

Ben 'Cerbera' Millard — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:15:40 +0000

The accessibility problems with example 1 seem like a bug with the screen reader, to me. If you have focussed a link, surely it should only read out the text for that link? Links are permitted in heading elements.

If the website Example 1 came from was trying to do a navigation list, then I agree that example should be using list markup. You could show what markup that involves to show this point more clearly.

Generally speaking, using headings for things which aren’t headings is a bad idea.

In the numbered list:

1. I agree that should be done as a paragraph. Aural output getting weirded up by incorrect markup is understandable.
2. It’s fine to have an image in a heading if that image has appropriate alt text? For most cases, the alt attribute would be the empty string. But your description makes it sound like a heading must never include an image?
3. If correct punctuation is used then the output should make sense. Generally speaking, “Foo (_Bar_)” should not sound exactly like “_Foo Bar_”.

How about Heading Links work, where the entire text of a heading is a single link? That seems like it would work wonderfully in a screen reader because the heading which has interested you can be followed immediately to the web page about it. (The same reason it works great for sighted users.)