Headings

The following are best practices for using HTML headings:

• Use <h1> for the main heading of the page. For most pages, there will be only one <h1>, marking the content that is unique on that page. The name of the website, which is often shown at the top of each web page within a website, does not need to be tagged as a heading at all.
• Use <h2> for subheadings beneath the main heading.
• Use additional levels of headings (<h3> through <h6>) as needed if there are additional levels of sub-headings within your web page content.
• Ensure headings form an outline of your page content; avoid skipping heading levels.

The WordPress rich text editor includes a toolbar with a format selector (see screenshot below). Use this format selector to select the appropriate heading level for your content.

Note that WordPress reserves Heading 1 for the title of the page or post, so the first heading that should be used in the rich content editor is Heading 2. Because of this, Heading 1 is typically not provided as an option, but this might not always be the case.

Headings are handled similarly in Drupal and other content management systems.

In Word, add headings using the built-in heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) available in the Ribbon. To change the appearance of any of these heading styles, simply right-click on the style button and select “Modify.”

If a PDF document is created from an authoring tool that supports headings and exports to tagged PDF (e.g., Microsoft Word), and these features were used properly when authoring the document, the document’s heading structure should be preserved within the PDF.

This can be checked and/or edited using either of two methods in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC:

Using the tag tree

To inspect the tag tree of a tagged document, follow these steps:

1. From the View menu, select Show/Hide > Navigation Panes > Tags. This will display the tags in descending order from top to bottom.
2. Review the tag tree of the PDF, checking to be sure headings are tagged as headings at the appropriate levels to form an outline of the page content (e.g., <H1>, <H2>, <H3>).

Using the Reading Order Tool

Adding headings to an untagged document using the Reading Order tool is part of a manual tagging, or remediation process, and will require tagging the entire document. For more information, see the Adobe Support documentation on using the Reading Order tool for PDFs. Additional training on using the Reading Order tool to remediate a PDF document manually is recommended.

To add heading tags using the Reading Order tool, follow these steps:

1. From the Accessibility Panel, launch the Reading Order tool.
2. Marquee the text, then apply the appropriate heading structure from the options in the Reading Order dialogue box.

NOTE: Modifying PDFs can have unpredictable results. Save often! (Saving multiple versions is recommended.)

In Google Docs, select headings from the Styles selector on the toolbar.

In Canvas, headings are selected from the Blocks selector on the toolbar (by default, “Paragraph” is selected). Note that Canvas automatically uses Heading 1 for the title of the page, so the first heading available in the rich content editor is Heading 2 (see screenshot below). Therefore, all top-level headings in the main content should use Heading 2. If the page includes sub-headings, use Heading 3 or Heading 4 as needed, keeping in mind that headings should form an outline of the page content and should not skip levels.