Heading structure: what to get right first

It is rarely the thing that gets a project approved, and often the thing that decides how it goes. If you only fix one thing about heading structure this quarter, make it the first item below.

Most of it is correctness rather than charity: use the right element and much of it happens automatically. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

Start here

Headings are how many people navigate a page. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

Then this

One h1, then no skipped levels. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

Eventually

Do not choose heading levels for their font size. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

In practice

The cost of retrofitting accessibility is several times the cost of building it in. Three things worth confirming about heading structure before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Do not choose heading levels for their font size — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Pick the one that would hurt most if it failed, and start there.