Headings

Overview

Headings give structure to your document or webpage by organizing content into sections. While bold or large fonts may help sighted users scan for section titles, assistive technologies rely on proper heading formatting to navigate efficiently. Without headings, screen reader users must read through the entire document instead of jumping directly to the section they need—like navigating a webpage with only left and right arrow keys. The proper heading hierarchy applies to all documents.

✅Checklist for Headings

• Are NOT simple paragraph text with increased font/bolding

• Headings follow a logical order without skipping levels

• Headings have a maximum of 120 characters 

• Headings are used for structure, not just to style bold text

• Heading levels reflect the content hierarchy

• Headings make sense without reading the full text (scannable)

Sample Correct Structure

(the "h" with a number and brackets are how headings appear in HTML. Canvas does the coding automatically when you use the editor.)  

<h1>Canvas Page Title</h1> (applied automatically) 

<h2>Assignments</h2>

  <h3>Assignment 1: Essay</h3>

  <h3>Assignment 2: Presentation</h3>

<h2>Readings</h2>

  <h3>Week 1 Readings</h3>

  <h3>Week 2 Readings</h3>

<h2>Exams</h2>

  <h3>Midterm</h3>

  <h3>Final</h3>

Site Scanning Tools: UDOIT & Ally Course Accessibility Report

About: Entire site scans are great for a comprehensive look at all the issues on your site and track your improvements through the scores generated. One recommended strategy is to choose one of the accessibility core areas and use the tools' filters to target a selected one of them at a time. These tool are accessed by clicking the link on your course navigation menu. If not present, this article will show you how to enable: Manage Course Navigation Links.

Selected Content Scanning in Canvas Edit Mode: Ally, Canvas, and DesignPLUS Accessibility Checkers

About: These three tools to do scans, not of an entire course, but on individual items of Canvas content such a page, assignment description, announcement, etc. They can be accessed anytime you are in Canvas Edit mode. Many users find these tools useful for quick clean ups of selected content and in tandem with site scanning tools. Making a habit of using these to check and fix content every time you're working in Canvas will go a long way in the ultimate goal of creating content that's accessible for all from the start! 

1: Ally Accessibility Checker

WebPage:(Vendor) Ally WYSIWYG Accessibility

2: Canvas Accessibility Checker

Video (2:25, Pope Tech) Canvas's built-in Accessibility Checker demo *Includes great demo of fixing color contrast.

Webpages:
(Vendor): How do I use the Accessibility Checker in the Rich Content Editor?
(UW IT) Overview: Accessibility tools in Canvas *Page has a section on this as well as other tools for accessibility in Canvas.

Creating/Manually Fixing Using the Canvas Rich Content Editor

About: Canvas has native features for fixing virtually all of the accessibility core issues--and avoiding creating those issues from the start when you are aware of them. 

• Visually scan your content in Edit mode.

• Click though all the headings used on a page where you can identify and edit structure using the Canvas Heading drop down. (You can also see the type in the bottom left as in image below showing that it's an h3.)  

• *Remember all Canvas page titles are automatically are tagged H1. 

• If you need headings higher than H4, click "Format" above right of the Heading box. When window opens, click Formats>Headings.