Accessibility of JDK API documentation: headings

[Jonathan Gibbons]

Sergey,

> Is it possible to catch such issues using doclint? 

In principle, yes; in practice, today: no.

I can and will update doclint to detect these issues, which reduces the 
problem to actually running doclint.

Right now, I'm using a custom annotation processor to detect and report 
problems. The line-numbers currently point to the declaration to which 
the doc comment applies; I hope to increase the resolution to the line 
number within the comment, and will include the reports in any bugs that 
get filed.

-- Jon


On 03/05/2019 05:08 PM, Sergey Bylokhov wrote:
> Hi, Jonathan.
>
> Is it possible to catch such issues using doclint?
>
> On 05/03/2019 17:04, Jonathan Gibbons wrote:
>> In our ongoing endeavors to improve the accessibility of the Java SE
>> and JDK API documentation, we need to pay attention to headings.
>> In this context, "heading" refers to the use of HTML tags <h1> ... <h6>
>> in the generated documentation.
>>
>> There are 3 problem areas; all need to be fixed to address the goal
>> of being able to generate accessible Java SE and JDK API documentation.
>>
>>   1. The standard doclet was inconsistent about its use of headings,
>>      using <h1> for the main heading on some pages, and <h2> for the
>>      main heading on other pages. This has now been fixed, and the
>>      main heading is now <h1> on all pages.
>>   2. The standard doclet provides little-to-no guidance as to the use of
>>      headings in documentation comments. This will be fixed.
>>      To summarize, headings in documentation comments for modules, 
>> packages
>>      and types should start at <h2>; headings in documentation comments
>>      for members of a type (field, constructor, method, etc) should 
>> start
>>      at <h4>.
>>   3. Many headings in documentation comments do not follow the best
>>      practices for headings in accessible documents. For example, many
>>      classes in java.lang.invoke use <h1> repeatedly within the
>>      documentation comments.
>>
>> The best practices are all to facilitate navigating and reading the page
>> with a screen reader, and can be summarized as follows:
>>
>>    * The main heading for a page should be <h1>
>>    * There should be just one <h1> per page
>>    * Headings should be hierarchical, and without ascending gaps, so 
>> <h1>
>>      should be followed by <h2>, <h2> should be followed by <h3> or
>>      another <h2>, etc.  It is OK to have "missing" headings when
>>      starting a new higher level section, so that <h4> may be 
>> followed by
>>      <h2>, for example; in that case, the <h2> would implicitly end the
>>      preceding section at the <h4> level and the one at the <h3> level.
>>
>> Now that javadoc has been fixed to generate consistent headings, we need
>> to address the headings in JDK API comments. The good news is that 
>> headings
>> in comments are relatively rare (about 600 overall) and of those, 
>> only about
>> 174 need to be fixed, in 126 files in 49 packages in 12 modules.
>>
>> Now that we have identified the headings that need to be fixed, I'll be
>> filing bugs against the various areas.  The issues fall into two 
>> categories:
>>
>> * Missing headings: these have generally been caused by changing javadoc
>>    to start headings at <h1> instead of <h2>.
>>    There are 105 instances of this issue.
>>
>> * Low headings: these are generally because of bad use of headings in
>>    documentation comments, such as the inappropriate use of <h1> or 
>> <h2> within
>>    a comment.
>>    There are 69 instances of this issue.
>>
>> -- Jon
>>
>
>