Slide Titles and HTML Header Associations for 508 Compliance

Jan 27, 2020

I recently received comments from a client noting that slide titles are not associated to HTML Header Tags (H1, H2, etc.)

In HTML and PDF documents, you generally use such Header Tags to define the structure of a document or web page. However, when I drill down the HTML export I find that each slide title is nested with a <tspan> tag and has NO properties for the header or level of header.

Is the standard?

How then does one using a screen reader know what is the title header and what is just body paragraph text?

...

I have found that using the variable %Heading% in the title field and then creating a slide timeline Trigger setting the variable %Heading% = "My unique slide title here" then that at least reads out loud, "Header, My unique slide title here" when using JAWS. But this still does not associate an actual header tag to the text upon export.

What is the correct use of %Heading%? Am I making this too complicated? Is there another variable trigger that I can use specific to defining standard HTML Header Tags (H1, H2, etc.)? Do you just NOT apply such tag associations in your compliance work? If so, then how do you ever pass compliance tests with your clients?

How do you handle slide titles and header tag expectations for 508 compliance in HTML exports?

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