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Is it important to have an H1 at the top of the page or can there be other text before it? The reason I ask, is because I was given a template to follow by my company that doesn't follow current standards. I updated it to current standards to get rid of all the depracated crap they want me to use. In the template given, There is a logo in the top left corner, with text to the right. The text lists, the organization on one line, the next has the division, department, and article title. The article title is what should be contained in the H1, but it is located under the organization, department and devision.
Another question... I use a text-only browser to test how pages will be read with a page reader such as JAWS. Is this safe, or is there much more to consider?
I know specifying ALT text on images is important, but if there is identical text directly next to the image would it be wise to include an empty ALT so when viewed text-only there isn't a repetition which, IMO, would be annoying? Or should I specify that it is a logo so the user knows there is an image there an can visualize the page better? One thought I had was to include an empty ALT to keep from repeting text, and including the text in the TITLE attribute so the tooltip would be included when images are visible. Or another method would be to specify that the image is a logo in the ALT, but in the TITLE only include the organization text so users who can see that the image is obviously a logo don't have to be told explicitly. I guess all these scenerios depend on if screen-readers read the ALT and TITLE...
I realize these are very small steps to achieving accessiblity and good structure, but they are the burning questions on my mind at the moment. Any thoughts are appreciated!
On the other hand, if there is text which would be essentially the same on many pages (department name for instance), that *may* be a good place to use image text. I recently worked with the knowledge base of a very large company (you would recognize the name) and they had a standard scheme similar to what you've outlined.
It was extremely dysfunctional for their Intranet search engine. You could get 100 search hits and every entry looked the same - at a glance there was no easy way to tell any two results apart.
About that alt attribute text -- what you say about avoiding repetition is an important point, especially if the layout is such that the assistive reader can associate the appropriate text with the correct image. Sometimes a layout is fine for establishing that relationship on a visual inspection, but in the bare HTML, the connection is not clear at all.
It was extremely dysfunctional for their Intranet search engine. You could get 100 search hits and every entry looked the same - at a glance there was no easy way to tell any two results apart.
-Isn't this what the meta description and title in the head section are for? I realize not all searches function the same, but this seems pretty basic to me. Should the head title and h1 be the same?
Also, does anyone know how various browsers utilize the title attribute? Do screen readers read both the alt and title? Lynx ignores title so I don't know for sure. Is it safe to view my pages as text-only to simulate how a screen-reader would interpret the page, or is this method not sufficient?
