TheAccessPond.com

There are apparently two schools of thought on how heading tags should be used on a web page. Some say that you should properly nest them (e.g., h1 followed by h2, h2 followed by h2 or h3, h3 followed by h3 or h4, etc.). For others, the proper nesting of heading tags is not so important and they feel you should instead use these tags to indicate the importance of the content.

I have found that even on the W3C sites there is a contradiction on this topic. For example the WCAG 2.0 H42 Technique uses an example (example 2) which shows using heading tags that are not properly nested. Under the resource links on that page there are two blog posts that indicate this as well, Pick a Heading and Quick tips for accessible headings. Yet if you look at the WCAG 2.0 G141 Technique it is clearly states that, “To facilitate navigation and understanding of overall document structure, authors should use headings that are properly nested (e.g., h1 followed by h2, h2 followed by h2 or h3, h3 followed by h3 or h4, etc.).”

I’d like to get your thoughts on this and how you think heading levels should be used…especially if you are a screen reader user and rely on the heading tags.

-Jeff

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