Three myths about heading structure

We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. A few things about heading structure that get repeated more often than they get checked.

The cost of retrofitting accessibility is several times the cost of building it in. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

“It only matters for big sites”

Headings are how many people navigate a page. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

“We can deal with it after launch”

Sometimes true, usually expensive. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one.

“Our platform handles it”

Do not choose heading levels for their font size. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.

What this looks like day to day

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
• 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

The point is not perfection, it is knowing which of these you have consciously chosen to skip.