About FAE: Rules Summary

Navigation & Orientation

Titles (title & h1)Best Practices (opens in a new window)

• The page must contain exactly one title element.
• The title element must have text content.
• The page must contain at least one h1 element.
• The page should contain no more than two h1 elements.
• The text content of each h1 element should match all or part of the title content.

  The matching algorithm for this rule includes the alt text of any img elements the h1 may contain, and ignores case, punctuation and spacing in the text content of both the title and h1 elements.

• Each h1 element must have text content.

  Attribution of text content to an h1 element includes the alt attribute values of any img elements it may contain, inserted in document order.

• Each h1 element should have text content exclusive of the alt text of any img elements it contains.

Subheadings (h2..h6)Best Practices (opens in a new window)

• Subheading elements that follow the last h1 should be properly nested.

  Subheading elements should be used without skipping levels when descending through the sublevels h2..h6. For example, an h2 element should follow an h1 element, an h3 element should follow an h2 element, and so on. Note that this rule does not apply to subheadings of the same level (for example, an h3 may follow another h3), or when ascending the hierarchy (an h2 may follow an h4).

• Each subheading element (h2..h6) must have text content.

  Attribution of text content to a subheading element includes the alt attribute values of any img elements it may contain, inserted in document order.

• Each subheading element (h2..h6) should have text content exclusive of the alt text of any img elements it contains.

Navigation BarsBest Practices (opens in a new window)

• Each ul or ol element that precedes the last h1 element and appears to be a navigation bar should be immediately preceded by a heading element, preferably an h2.

  FAE considers a ul or ol element to be a navigation bar if it appears to be a navigation list, defined recursively as follows. A navigation list is a ul or ol element that contains one or more "item with link" li elements, and no more than one li element that does not qualify as an "item with link". An "item with link" is defined as an li element that contains either a single text link (a element) or a link followed by a nested navigation list, optionally preceded by a heading element.

• Each map element that precedes the last h1 element and appears to be a navigation bar should be immediately preceded by a heading element, preferably an h2

  FAE considers a map element to be a navigation bar if it contains one or more area elements.

• Each area element should have a redundant text link (a element) with matching href value.

Form Control LabelsBest Practices (opens in a new window)

• Each input element with type=text | password | checkbox | radio | file and each select and textarea element must either be referenced by the for attribute of a label element via its id attribute, or have a title attribute.

  Label referencing is implemented by setting the label element's for attribute value equal to that of the form control's id attribute.

• Each input element with type=button | submit | reset must have either a value attribute or a title attribute.
• Each input element with type=image must have either an alt attribute or a title attribute.
• Each label and legend element must have text content.

Default LanguageBest Practices (opens in a new window)

• Each page must have a lang attribute on its html element whose value or initial subtag is a valid two-character language code.

  Valid two-character language codes are defined in the IANA Language Subtag Registry. If the lang attribute value is hyphenated, then the substring preceding the first hyphen is tested for validity.

Data TablesBest Practices (opens in a new window)

To qualify as a data table, the table element must (a) contain at least two rows and two columns and (b) have or contain at least one of the following: a summary attribute; a caption element; a thead element; a th element; or a td element with a scope or headers attribute.

To qualify as a complex data table, the table element must (a) qualify as a data table and (b) contain any of the following: a thead element that contains two or more tr elements; a tr element with a td or th element with a rowspan or colspan attribute value greater than 1; a tr element that contains at least one td element and two or more th elements; two or more tr elements that contain only th elements; a tr element with a td or th element with a headers attribute value that contains more than two IDREFs.

• For each data table, the first cell in each column must be a th element, and each row must contain at least one th element.
• Each data table must have a nonempty summary attribute.
• The summary attribute value for each data table on a page should be unique.

  Uniqueness comparisons are case-insensitive and performed on whitespace-normalized attribute values.

• Each th element in a complex data table must have an id attribute whose value is unique relative to all ids on the page.
• Each td element in a complex data table must have a headers attribute that references the id attributes of associated th elements.

Access KeysBest Practices (opens in a new window)

• Each accesskey attribute value on a page should be unique.

FramesBest Practices (opens in a new window)

• Each frame element must have a nonempty title attribute.
• The title attribute value for each frame element within a frameset must be unique.

  Uniqueness comparisons are case-insensitive and performed on whitespace-normalized attribute values.

Text Equivalents

Informative ImagesBest Practices (opens in a new window)

• Each img element must have an alt attribute.

Decorative ImagesBest Practices (opens in a new window)

• Each img element with an empty alt attribute should be removed; CSS techniques should be used instead.
• Each img element with width or height less than 8 pixels should be removed; CSS techniques should be used instead.

Image MapsBest Practices (opens in a new window)

• Each area element must have an alt attribute.

Scripting

Focusable elements are primarily links and form controls. Specifically, they include the a element with an href attribute and/or a tabindex attribute with a value of 0 or greater, and the area, button, input, select and textarea elements.

onclickBest Practices (opens in a new window)

• The onclick attribute should not be used on elements that cannot accept keyboard focus.

onmouseover & onmouseoutBest Practices (opens in a new window)

• Each focusable element with an onmouseover attribute should also have an onfocus attribute, and their associated event handlers should trigger the same or similar actions.
• Each focusable element with an onmouseout attribute should also have an onblur attribute, and their associated event handlers should trigger the same or similar actions.
• The onmouseover and onmouseout attributes should not be used on elements that cannot accept keyboard focus; use CSS techniques instead to provide the desired stylistic effects.

Styling

Text StylingBest Practices (opens in a new window)

• The font and center elements must not be used. Instead use structural markup with CSS for styling.
• The b element must not be used for bold styling of text content. Instead use heading elements h1..h6 for heading text or the strong element for emphasizing words, phrases or sentences.
• The i element must not be used to italicize text content. Instead use heading elements h1..h6 for heading text or the em element for emphasizing words, phrases or sentences.
• The u element must not be used to underline text content. Instead use heading elements h1..h6 for heading text or the em or strong elements for emphasizing words, phrases or sentences.
• The blink and marquee elements must not be used.

  Blinking or moving text causes accessibility problems for people with photosensitive epilepsy and visual impairments.

Layout TablesBest Practices (opens in a new window)

• Tables should be used only for organizing data in rows and columns. Use CSS instead of tables and nested tables to visually layout blocks of related content for graphical rendering.

  The existence of deeply nested tables suggests that tables are being used for page layout. Nested tables can cause readability problems when a page is linearized.

HTML Standards

W3C SpecificationsBest Practices (opens in a new window)

• Each page must include a DOCTYPE declaration to facilitate rendering and validation.
• The character encoding of each page should be specified within the value of the content attribute (using charset=) on a meta element that also includes an http-equiv attribute set to "content-type".

  For example, if the character encoding is UTF-8, it could be specified in XHTML with: <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>