Accessibility of JDK API documentation: headings

Jonathan Gibbons jonathan.gibbons at oracle.com
Mon Mar 11 14:41:11 UTC 2019


Hi Lance,

I'm working to update doclint with improve validation of headings.  I 
hope to post the review for that work today.

-- Jon

On 3/11/19 4:41 AM, Lance Andersen wrote:
> Hi Jon,
>
> Once we fix (or believe we have), is there a way to validate that we 
> addressed the issue?
>
> Best
> Lance
>> On Mar 6, 2019, at 4:06 PM, Jonathan Gibbons 
>> <jonathan.gibbons at oracle.com <mailto:jonathan.gibbons at oracle.com>> wrote:
>>
>> 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
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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> Oracle Java Engineering
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