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I enjoy and benefit from extensions such as headingsMap that let you take advantage of this feature. For example, a recipe might only need a few h2 elements to section the ingredients, instructions, and backstory, while an academic paper might need all six heading levels to fully communicate nuance.īeing able to quickly scan all the headings on a page or view and jump to a specific one is a technique that isn’t limited to just screen readers, either. Writing effective heading levels is a bit of an art, in that you want enough information to communicate the overall scope of the page, but not overwhelm someone by over-describing. This creates a hierarchical outline that is easy to scan: 1. Navigating by heading is by far the most popular method many assistive technology users use to understand the content of the page or view they’re looking at.īecause of this, you want to use Markdown’s heading formatting options ( #, #, #, #, #, and #) to create a logical heading structure: Here are three things you can do right now to make a large, significant impact. It can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to making your content accessible. The Three Most Important Things You Can Do There isn’t a Clippy-esque experience to accompany you while you write, meaning that you won’t get a warning if you do something that will create inaccessible content.īecause of these two considerations, there are things we can do to ensure our Markdown content is as accessible as it can be.There are certain types of content Markdown does not support, and.When it comes to ensuring your Markdown content is accessible, there are two big-picture issues: In addition, there is more to accessibility than just assistive technology. Markdown isn’t all-encompassing, nor is it prescriptive. Markdown generates simple HTML markup, and simple HTML markup can be easily read by assistive technology. Since Markdown is a digital tool, it also has accessibility considerations to be aware of. Markdown And AccessibilityĪccessibility is a holistic concern, meaning that it affects every aspect of creating and maintaining digital experiences. Generates this as HTML markup: I am a sentence that includes HTML and Markdown formatting. The following example: I am a sentence that includes HTML and _Markdown_ formatting. You can also blend HTML with Markdown, and it will all boil down to HTML when compiled.
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Would create the following HTML markup: I am a link After the closing square bracket, you then include a URL wrapped in parenthesis to create a destination for the link. For example, you can create a link by wrapping a character, word, or phrase in square brackets. Markdown uses special arrangements of characters to format content.
#Markdown ufocus code#
Two notable examples are comments on GitHub and the source code for posts on Smashing Magazine! How Markdown Works You can find Markdown in many places on the internet, especially in locations where developers are present. It was created by John Gruber in 2004 with the goal of making writing formatted text in a plain text editor easier. Markdown is a small text to HTML conversion language.
#Markdown ufocus update#
At first, it may seem daunting since there is a lot of content to cover across a few different subject areas, but keep in mind that each tweak and update will have a direct impact on someone’s quality of life when using the web. This article covers different aspects of Markdown and how it interacts with other technology. You can find Markdown in many places on the Internet.
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