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I am using section tag for grouping topics and replies on the forum page. In cases that I need to load the topic and its replies on other article page, I use div tag for the same block and change topic title from h1 to h2. Although it is valid. But, for assistive technology, will this make navigating a bit confusing?
Assuming that the assistive technology you are talking about concerns mainly screenreaders, the best way for you to know how accessible your pages are is by downloading one yourself and testing it out. A free screenreader that I have used to do this is called NVDA but there are more out there.
In general, screenreaders work best when a page has a logical structure behind it. If you are displaying several articles, make sure that each article is located in a similar heirarchical location on the page and that each article itself resembles the others in terms of its structure. Using HTML5 semantic tags like
article,asideand the like can be helpful but are not necessary. Screenreaders and other assistive technologies have made due for a lot longer than these tags have been around. They are certainly good to use when possible, but there are other more important ways to make your page accessible to as wide an audience as possible.Another good thing to do is to use header tags for titles, and to use them in order. Screenreaders often give the option to users to skip from heading to heading in order to get a summary of what is on the page. You can also include visually invisible (via placing them far off the edge of the page using CSS) links at the top of the page, or in sections where placing a heading may not be appropriate visually. These will be read in context by screenreaders without your non-visually-impaired users seeing them.
If you are concerned about accessibility, a good way to get a clearer picture of how accessible your pages are is by following the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) standard recommendations. WCAG is managed by the W3C, and has various levels of accessibility that you can consider respecting when developing your content. The W3C has a list of validators that can be found here.