Headings must be nested correctly Accessibility Checkpoint

Description

Headings must be nested correctly. For example, h2 must appear after h1, h3 after h2 etc.

Help

Renumber headings so that the top level heading is h1, sub-headings are h2 and so on. Use CSS style rules to change heading font styles if needed.

Applicable standards

• WCAG 1.0 (Success Criteria: 3.5 level AA)

Change history

• 6.46 Sep 2022 Removed - WCAG 1.0 guidelines are obsolete.
• 5.5 May 2014 Don’t trigger for non-W3C technologies.
• 4.7 Jun 2012 Don’t trigger for WCAG2 (which doesn’t require strict nesting of headings).
• 3.5 Dec 2009 Don’t require an H1 to come before H2 (there are examples of H2 before H1 in WCAG 2 success techniques, and this is done on WAI site).
• 3.0 Dec 2008 Now triggers WCAG2 issue.
• 1.0 Feb 2007 Added.

This page describes a web site issue detected in HTML documents by SortSite Desktop and OnDemand Suite.

Rule ID: AccWcag1-3.5.1