Headings

 

 Student experience

 

Watch this video to learn about heading interpretation and how formatting is essential to digital accessibility. 

  • Duration
  • 0:55

 

 Step 1: Determine your content organization

 

Does your page need headings? 

Chunking material prevents cognitive overload, providing information in digestible pieces for your students. They will help your students better understand the main points of each section, help provide a cognitive schema for the information you're presenting, and allow your students to skim the page.

Here are two examples of pages without and with headings. 

Without Headings

  • Difficult to determine various sections
  • A bit overwhelming content presentation as the content appears to be a continuous block of text

 

With Headings

  • Creates an organized page
  • The different sized header text draws our students' attention to the separate sections 



















From an accessibility perspective, headings are valuable as they provide individuals using screen readers with a simple method to navigate within a Content Page. In a recent study conducted by WebAim Links to an external site. investigating the browsing habits of screen reader users, over 75% of individuals reported they use headings always or often to navigate web pages. Rather than navigating line-by-line through a document or Web page, the use of headings allows individuals to move through the information based on the heading topic. 

Watch this intro video about screen readers' perspective, common mistakes, and how to properly organize headings.

  • Duration
  • 3:14

 

 Different heading styles = Different text size 

The different heading style sizes help visual learners understand how the subtopics relate to the main topics, and with one another. 

  • Header 2 is used for new independent, main topics 
  • Header 3 and Header 4 are used for subtopics

 Headings help summarize and restate

To effectively convey major topics and how they are related, it is important to use descriptive heading text to introduce topics and sub-topics in order. This provides an opportunity to emphasize or restate the primary points you want your students to take away.

Simply, headings provide an outline of the main ideas and subtopics of your document. 

 Common mistakes

Skipping heading levels examples:

  • Beginning a page with Header 3 or 4 (Remember, Canvas content pages begin with the title stylized with Header 1) 
  • Skipping heading levels (Example: Beginning a content page with Header 2 and immediately applying Header 4)

Using the RCE to manually format

Though using font size, bold, and underline to create a header may look nice, these formatting features don't have the HTML tags that screen reader devices need to identify the headers. Moreover, underlined text, as you'll soon discover, has a very specific meaning in web-based contexts - it denotes a hyperlink. Underlining your text may confuse sighted users, who will expect the text to then link them to another page.

 

 Step 2: Microsoft Word tutorial 

 

 Watch tutorial 

  • Duration
  • 1:25

 Read tutorial

 Desktop version

  1. From the Home tab, choose the Styles Pane. This will open the list of heading and other styles for use in the document. 
  2. Place focus on the appropriate content and choose the relevant heading style.
  3. Headings can be marked with the following keyboard shortcuts:
    • CTRL + ALT + 1 applies the Heading 1 style
    • CTRL + ALT + 2 applies the Heading 2 style
    • CTRL + ALT + 3 applies the Heading 3 style
  4. If Styles are missing in the Quick Styles Gallery view, select All styles.
  5. Select the Style missing and add to the Quick Styles Gallery.

 

 Change the heading style 

Sometimes when beginning accessibility remediation on a document you did not create, you may notice that some of the styles need to be adjusted.

  1. After selecting Home on the menu, select Styles Pane.
  2. In the Apply a style section, find the heading style that needs to be adjusted.
    Place your cursor over the heading, and a drop-down menu should appear. Select Modify Style...
  3. The Modify Style dialogue will appear. 
    Under the Formatting section, select a readable font and any other preferences. 
    Select Add to Quick Style list to allow you to easily access this heading style in the Styles button.
    Select OK.  

  

 Word online version

  1. In the menu, select Home.
  2. Highlight the phrase/word or place your cursor next at the line designated as a heading.
  3. Select the appropriate heading style.

Note: Word Online does not allow heading style customizations. You will need to work in the Word Desktop version.