Katrina wrote: > Barney Carroll wrote: >> I was recently told by an automated accessibility test that my >> navigation was not up to scratch because it simply consisted of a >> plain ul at its highest level. It penalised me for not having a >> preceding heading to give some kind of indication of what the ul was >> about. Now I've never seen a navigation marked 'navigation', and >> even in the most of eccentric sites I've always been correct in the >> assumption that the first list of links with category denominations >> is some kind of navigation tool. >> >> I'd like to know what people think about that first of all - does >> anybody give headings to their navigation?
While using a heading to identify your navigation *may* be useful in some instances, it is neither an "official" requirement, nor to my knowledge even a documented Best Practice beyond what the tool (which I suspect is the FAE) is suggesting (http://cita.uiuc.edu/html-best-practices/nav/menus.php). I have had this discussion with the FAE developer, and it really is an opinion. The opinion is grounded in experience, to be sure, however the omission of an <h2> was originally marked as a fail, and now is simply marked as a warning. My *opinion* is that even the most inexperienced non-sighted visitor will very quickly understand a navigational block of links for what they are - to presume differently is a tad patronizing to me. I think that this result also under-scores the critical pint that no single automated testing tool can determine beyond question the accessibility of any given site - it requires a thinking brain to make that final determination. > > > Your post really reminded me of an older post that talked about this: > http://www.usability.com.au/resources/ozewai2005/ Presumptions are just that. To categorically state X, Y or Z regarding any user or user-group is bad juju, as Roger's presentation illustrates. > > May I asked which automated accessibility test? I will guess that it is/was: http://fae.cita.uiuc.edu Register for a free user account at: http://fae.cita.uiuc.edu/register.php. As always, just my $0.02. JF ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
