Headings

Main considerations

• How many headings to use is a judgement call. Use headings in appropriate places, but use them sparingly. Too many headings can make content more difficult to navigate, just focus on providing titles for section differentiation. Lengthy content should almost always have headings to help users navigate.
• Headings should be concise. Paragraphs or full sentences should rarely, if ever, be used as headings.
• Simply setting font to bold or increasing size does not make something a heading to a screen reader. Headings must be properly styled. Depending on what platform you are using this may be using tags or styles or some other means.
• Heading levels are meant to be heirarchial and must be properly nested. Skipping levels will cause issues with screen readers. For example you cannot jump from a Heading 2 straight to a Heading 4. A Heading 3 must be present. 
• Also note that breaking up content with headings makes it easier to read for all users. 

Examples

There are six different levels of headings; H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6. They should be used in order from most important to least important. Levels of subheadings should be underneath main headings, and so on. 

Never use anything beyond H6. If a program you're using allows H7, do not use it. Screen readers will only go up to H6 for navigation. 

H1 tags should contain the most important concept for the content, generally the title, and in rare circumstances maybe some other relevant info. This should also be the first heading, doing so will make sure it is the first heading that a screen reader user finds. 

For webpages, never use more than one H1. In documents that's still generally the case but larger documents can often use multiple H1s. When working with documents do not use the Title style or tag, instead use Heading 1. 

General Resources

Headings do not require additional elements afterwards, you can have two or more headings in a row, but most headings have some sort of context after them like paragraph text, lists, tables, etc.

To learn more about using headings in documents, view the Documents Accessibility training.