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[b49b2e] Accessibility support note on empty headings being exposed #2351

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[b49b2e] Accessibility support note on empty headings being exposed #2351

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aa767f9
Accessibility support note on empty headings being exposed
daniel-montalvo Sep 8, 2025
d5bdbbf
Fix typo
daniel-montalvo Sep 9, 2025
6cfbe41
Merge branch 'develop' into b49b2e-acc-supp-updates
daniel-montalvo Oct 13, 2025
85dd9cb
Merge branch 'develop' into b49b2e-acc-supp-updates
daniel-montalvo Oct 31, 2025
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4 changes: 3 additions & 1 deletion _rules/heading-descriptive-b49b2e.md
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Expand Up @@ -42,14 +42,16 @@ Headings that are visible but not in the accessibility tree are a failure of [Su

### Assumptions

This rule assumes that the [flat tree][] order is close to the reading order as elements are rendered on the page. Due to positioning, it is possible to render a document in an order that greatly differs from the tree order, in which case the content which is visually associated with a heading might not be the content following it in tree order and this rule might fail while [Success Criterion 2.4.6 Headings and Label][sc246] is still satisfied.
This rule assumes that the [flat tree][] order is close to the reading order as elements are rendered on the page. Due to positioning, it is possible to render a document in an order that greatly differs from the tree order, in which case the content which is visually associated with a heading might not be the content following it in tree order and this rule might fail while [Success Criterion 2.4.6 Headings and Labels][sc246] is still satisfied.

This rule also assumes that the content the heading is intended to describe is [visible][] and not hidden from assistive technologies. Otherwise, cases such as expandable content using a heading might fail this rule while [Success Criterion 2.4.6 Headings and Label][sc246] is still satisfied.

### Accessibility Support

Implementation of [Presentational Roles Conflict Resolution][] varies from one browser or assistive technology to another. Depending on this, some [semantic][semantic role] `heading` elements can fail this rule with some technology but users of other technologies would not experience any accessibility issue.

There is currently a screen reader / browser combination which actively exposes empty headings `<hx></hx>` or `<span role="heading" aria-level="x"></span>` when querying the screen reader for the list of page headings. These constructs are not applicable for this rule but can still cause accessibility issues if relying exclusively on that particular combination.

### Other Resources

- [Understanding Success Criterion 1.3.1: Info and Relationships](https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/info-and-relationships.html)
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