Heading structure: the questions we get asked most

The version of this that works is simpler than the version most people imagine. The questions about heading structure that come up most often on our calls.

Accessibility work almost always improves the experience for people who have no impairment at all. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

Do we need to care about this?

Headings are how many people navigate a page. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions.

How do we know it is working?

Do not choose heading levels for their font size. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

In practice

Most of it is correctness rather than charity: use the right element and much of it happens automatically. Three things worth confirming about heading structure before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• One h1, then no skipped levels — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.