Just a moment here. If we are talking about accessibility here, I would like to add something here.
1. Don't tell me that using on every single page the same <h1> is an accessibility issue.
<h1> is the
HTML element for the first-level heading of a document.
More:
Use <h1> for top level heading - Quality Web Tips
Besides that, not using a unique <h1> tag on all your pages is not search engine friendly either, if they do not see that as a spamindexing method already.
2. What do you mean putting text in an element and then using image replacement is pretty a standard accessibility technique? Can you be more specific? Can you give me an example?
3. If you have on you page "Skip to main content" or similar features, I would understand if you would hide those features from non-blind users, but in that case, you might have accessibility problems for other users with disabilities relying on tabbing. We have implemented a technique on our web site hiding those features, which are still accessible to users who are relying on tabbing too. If you want to say here that the <h1> can be replaced with an image, then image must also be accessible to color-blind users too. But as I said above, that is not the purpose of the <h1>. Period.
I read that post of Matt, but I do not see what does that have to do with this issue.
If search engines are not able to read CSS, doesn't mean that they will never be able to do so. But that is another story.
Matt Cutts said there:
Quote:
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Hmm. “Insert your hidden text here. Do not forget to [embiggen] your keywords.” I don’t recommend that people use CSS to hide text, and I don’t recommend that they document it, either.
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After all, the case is that the <h1> tags were not hidden from the search engines, which might not be the reason of being penalized, but that fact that the <h1> tags were not unique and they had strong keywords within that element, I am not sure that someone can overcome something like that, just like this.
Maybe going a bit off-topic: I think you might would like to see a video, to see how blind people deal with sites and those elements:
Yahoo and Accessibility
After all, if Danny has the opinion that the technique he implemented is not legal, I am sure he must already being working on this issue, if he did not do so already.
