How to get heading structure right
Every audit we run turns up some version of this. The short answer to heading structure is that it is mostly a sequence of small decisions, not one big one.
Most of it is correctness rather than charity: use the right element and much of it happens automatically. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.
Why it matters
Headings are how many people navigate a page. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.
The steps
- Establish what you have today before changing anything
- One h1, then no skipped levels
- Do not choose heading levels for their font size
- Write down the decision so the next person does not re-litigate it
Do not choose heading levels for their font size. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.
What to do next
In practice
Accessibility work almost always improves the experience for people who have no impairment at all. Three things worth confirming about heading structure before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Headings are how many people navigate a page — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.