How to properly structure page headings to ensure high-quality navigation for screen reader users?

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A logical and consistent heading hierarchy is one of the fundamental requirements of web accessibility and search engine optimization. Screen reader users often use headings as a table of contents to quickly navigate the page, skipping unnecessary text blocks and jumping straight to the sections of interest.

Violating the sequence of heading levels, such as skipping from an h2 level to an h4 or using heading tags solely to visually increase font size, disorients users and makes perceiving the site's structure extremely difficult. Every document must have a single main first-level heading corresponding to the main meaning of the page, followed by subsections.

To create a proper document structure, it is recommended to perform the following steps:

1. Use exactly one h1 tag on each page to indicate its main title or topic.
2. Place first-level subsections under the main heading exclusively using h2 tags.
3. For subsections within second-level sections, use h3 tags and so on, avoiding any skipped nesting levels.
4. Check the visual styling via CSS stylesheets rather than by choosing a heading level just to get the desired text size.
5. Test the structure using special browser extensions that visualize the page heading tree.

Following these simple rules allows you to create an intuitive document map. Thanks to this, people with visual impairments can easily navigate large amounts of information and quickly find the thematic blocks they need without having to listen to the entire page.

How to properly structure page headings to ensure high-quality navigation for screen reader users?

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