Web Accessibility
Page Organization: Use headings, lists, and consistent structure. Use CSS for layout and style where possible.
When designing a document or series of documents, content developers should strive first to identify the desired structure for their documents before thinking about how the documents will be presented to the user. Distinguishing the structure of a document from how the content is presented offers a number of advantages, including improved accessibility, manageability, and portability.
Checkpoint 3.5 [Priority 2] Use header
to convey document structure and use them according to specification:
Long documents are often divided into a variety of chapters, chapters have subtopics and subtopics are divided into various sections, sections into paragraphs, etc. These semantic chunks of information make up the structure of the document.
Sections should be introduced with the HTML heading elements (H1-H6). Other markup may complement these elements to improve presentation (e.g., the HR element to create a horizontal dividing line), but visual presentation is not sufficient to identify document sections.
Since some users skim through a document by navigating its headings, it is important to use them appropriately to convey document structure. Users should order heading elements properly. For example, in HTML, H2 elements should follow H1 elements, H3 elements should follow H2 elements, etc. Content developers should not "skip" levels (e.g., H1 directly to H3). Do not use headings to create font effects; use style sheets to change font styles for example.
Note that in HTML, heading elements (H1 - H6) only start sections, they don't contain them as element content. The following HTML markup shows how style sheets may be used to control the appearance of a heading and the content that follows:
Checkpoint 3.6 [Priority 2] Mark up lists and list items properly:
The HTML list elements DL, UL, and OL should only be used to create lists, not for formatting effects such as indentation.
Non-visual users may "get lost" in lists, especially in nested lists and those that do not indicate the specific nest level for each list item. Until user agents provide a means to identify list context clearly (e.g., by supporting the ':before' pseudo-element in CSS2), content developers should include contextual clues in their lists.
For numbered lists, compound numbers are more informative than simple numbers. Thus, a list numbered "1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.2.1, 1.3, 2, 2.1," provides more context than the same list without compound numbers.
Checkpoint 3.3 [Priority 2] Use style sheets to control layout and presentation:
Use the stylesheets provided by the Instructional Design and Development group to format text (font face, size and color). With a more advanced understanding of stylesheets, one can use a CSS file to control the layout of a page. This may be beyond the scope of most content developers. For additional resources, visit the following sites:
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