Welcome to this presentation on using headings effectively.
My name is Greg Kraus, University IT Accessibility Coordinator at NC State University.
What are some basic guidelines for using headings within pages?
The first thing to remember is that headings are primarily used to aid in navigation, especially
for screen reader users.
However you use headings, you want to make sure that they're actually helping the user
easily get to the points on the page that they need to get to.
It's important not to use too many headings, otherwise, it becomes too cumbersome to actually,
navigate the page, because there's too many headings to figure out what's really important.
It's also important not to use too few headings, because then it gets too hard to drill down
to the information that they want to get to.
Also, don't skip heading levels.
Don't think, "Well, this bit of information is pretty important, so I'll make this a heading
level two.
But, my next bit of information really isn't important at all, so I'm going to make that
a heading level five."
Go ahead and make it a heading level three, because it shows that it is not as important
as the heading level two.
Just a note, the guidelines that I'm going to be showing you here can be slightly different
for HTML5.
Those issues will be covered in another presentation.
Which heading level should you use in your document?
First, think of your document, whether, it's a Microsoft Word document or a web page, think
of it as an outline.
You have main points, and you have sub points under those.
If you begin to think of your document in that structure, it's much easier to assign
different heading levels to the different parts of your documents.
Your most important point of your document should be your heading one.
That might be different, depending on the type of document that you're making.
If it's a word processing document, your heading one is probably going to be the title of your
document.
However, if you're creating a web page, your heading one might be where your main, unique
content begins for each page, and not necessarily the title of a page.
There are a couple of different ways that you can actually do this.
We'll see some demonstrations of this in a minute.
Also, you want to have at least one heading level one on a page, but I recommend not using
any more than two heading level ones per page.
Let's look at some examples of how to use heading levels in different types of documents.
Here, I have a Microsoft Word document, and what I've done here is I have a title for
my document, "IT Accessibility Stories," and I've made this my heading one for my page.
It's basically the title of my document.
In here, I have a number of stories.
I have one on "Creating Accessible PDFs for Microsoft Publisher."
I've made that a heading level two, it's the next most important point.
But, since I have other stories, I've made those heading level twos as well.
If I scroll down, I have another story called, "Google Apps Accessibility Guidelines."
Since, that's of equal importance as the previous story, I've made that another heading two.
Then, I have another story, "FAQs for ICT Accessibility Regulation."
I've made that a heading two as well.
What you don't want to do is, you don't want to make your title your heading one, and then,
your first story a heading two.
Then, come down to your next story and make that a heading three, and your next one a
heading four.
There are a couple of reasons why you don't want to do that.
First, you're going to run out of heading levels.
Typically, you only have up to six heading levels.
Heading levels also denote order of importance, or how important an item is.
Each of these stories are sections as equally important, so I make them all the same level.
I make them heading level twos.
You will also notice, within the first story, "Creating Accessible PDFs," that's a heading
level two.
I have subsections within here.
I have a section on alternative text and, since that is a subsection, I've made that
a heading level three.
Then, I have another subsection.
I've made that a heading level three as well.
You can even have subsections of subsections, and you'd make those heading fours.
Here's what this page would look like if I wrote it out as an outline.
Here's an example of a web page.
On this particular page, what I've done is I've taken the title of my page, "The NC State
University IT Accessibility Blog," and I made that my heading level one.
That is my page title, and each of my stories...
My first story here is "Getting My Google Doc in a More Accessible Format".
I made that a heading level two, because that's the next major point.
If I scroll down, I've got another story on Google Apps Accessibility Guidelines.
That's a heading level two.
"FAQs for ICT Accessibility Regulation," that's a heading level two, and so forth.
In my story of "Getting My Google Doc in a More Accessible Format," I have a subsection
here, so why make this tool at all, I made that a heading level three.
Now, also on this page, I have other sections of the page besides just the stories.
I have little blocks over here on the side for recent posts and categories.
Now, I've chosen to make each of those blocks a heading level two.
Recent posts is a heading level two, categories is a heading level two, archives is a heading
level two, and so forth.
You don't necessarily have to make these side blocks, in this case, having level twos.
You can make a case that they're not as important as the stories, that they could be heading
level threes, but in order to keep a consistent navigation and logical structure to the page,
I made them all heading twos.
By making them heading three that implies there's a heading above them, heading two,
that describes what all of those things do together.
If I had some text up here that might say, "Right Hand Side Bar," that could be a heading
level two, and then each of the things under that could be heading level threes.
Since, I don't have anything like that, I went ahead and made these heading level twos.
Basically, I didn't want to skip a heading level, and imply that if I had made these
heading threes, that the previous heading two had something to do with these blocks
on the side.
In that case, the previous heading level two would be the last story listed on this page,
and so that might make the user think that these blocks are related to that story, when
in fact, they're not.
I've made them of equal importance as the stories that are all heading level twos.
Here's what this page would look like if I wrote it out as an outline.
Here, I have a web page where headings are implemented differently.
Looking at this page, you might think that the title of the page, "NC State University
IT Accessibility Resources," is my heading level one, but in fact, I've actually made
that my heading level two.
In my opinion, in this case, this is not the most important thing about this page.
For me, the most important thing is what makes this page unique.
It's the content of the page, it's this Download Google Doc to Microsoft Office Bookmarklet.
That is what I made my heading level one.
Within this site, I have several pages that have the same look and feel to them, and when
a user comes to each of my pages, I don't want them to think that the main point of
the page is this title up here.
I want them to know that the main point of the page is what's unique down here, so that's
why I turned this item, the Download Google Doc, into my heading level one.
You're going to find lots of different opinions on whether this is correct or not.
Some people will say, you should always make your title of your page a heading level one.
Some people will say, you should make your title a heading level one, and the beginning
of your main contents a heading level one.
Some people will say, like I did in this particular instance, just make the beginning of your
main content a heading level one.
At the end of the day, if you do any of those three options, it's going to be OK.
As long as you're using headings effectively and consistently across your site, any of
those three options will work fine.
In this particular case, since, I made the Download Google Doc text my heading level
one, the text that follows that, I did make that heading level two.
What This Tool Does, What This Tool Does Not Do, and so forth, those are all heading level
twos.
Here's what this page would look like if I wrote it out as an outline.