Your learning page has generous spacing, bold labels and a clear-looking layout. Yet someone returning to change a booking still has to read from the top to find the relevant instruction.
A visual hierarchy can help a reader scan. A structural heading also identifies a section in the document. The two should work together. This audit starts with one practical question: can someone locate the section they need without already knowing the page?
The equipment-booking lesson below is fictional. It illustrates an editing process, not a tested client result.
Read the outline without the page
Open a preview of the learning page and inspect its heading structure using an appropriate accessibility inspection tool or screen reader. Record the actual heading levels and labels. Do not infer those levels from font size.
Imagine that the page shows a large “Equipment booking” title, followed by “Introduction,” “More” and “Change a booking.” The last label is bold body text rather than a heading. A structural outline could contain only the title, Introduction and More. The instruction the learner came back for is visually prominent but absent from that outline.
Now read your extracted outline on its own. Where would someone expect to find the prerequisites, the booking procedure and the change procedure? Mark labels that conceal the topic, sections missing from the outline, and subsections whose relationship is unclear.
Figure 1. A bold paragraph can be visible but absent from the heading outline.
Name the task inside each section
Do not rename every heading until you have checked the content beneath it. “Change a booking” is useful only if that section actually explains how to make a change.
For our example, the first section asks the learner to check availability and obtain any necessary permission. The second explains the booking request. The third covers an existing reservation.
A more useful outline is:
H1: Book shared equipment
H2: Check before you book
H2: Request a booking
H2: Change an existing booking
Under “Change an existing booking,” the lesson separates changes before collection from problems after collection. Those are two H3 subsections within that H2 section.
This is an editorial decision based on the fictional content. Another page may need different labels. Keep terminology consistent with the actual booking service; do not promise a “Cancel” option if the system only allows a request to an administrator.
Choose levels by relationship
Use the editor’s real heading styles. Enlarging a paragraph or making it bold does not necessarily give it heading semantics in the published output.
Treat headings at the same level as peer sections. Put a subsection one level below the section it belongs to. Choose the relationship first, then adjust the visual style through the available design controls.
Returning from a deeper subsection to a new higher-level section is normal. For example, an H2 can follow an H3 when the H3 subsection has ended. That is different from jumping from H2 to H4 to start a subsection.
Also check what the platform supplies. The page title may already be rendered as H1. Do not insert a second copy of that title merely to recreate the example. Inspect the whole page structure before deciding where the article body begins.
Figure 2. Peer sections share a level; the two H3 sections belong within the final H2.
Check the result after saving
An editor’s style menu is evidence of what you selected, not proof of the final page structure. Save the draft, open its rendered preview and inspect the resulting headings again.
Check three things separately:
Do the headings describe the sections beneath them?
Does the rendered structure preserve the intended parent-and-subsection relationships?
Can the reader navigate and operate the page with their available tools?
For the third check, distinguish ordinary keyboard operation from screen-reader navigation. Tab generally moves between focusable controls and links; it is not a general command for moving between headings. A screen reader may provide its own heading-navigation commands or a headings list, depending on the software and mode.
Test the specific environment you intend to support. Record the browser, assistive technology when used, page version and observed result. If you have only inspected the structure, say so; do not label that a completed screen-reader test.
A heading repair is one part of accessibility work. It does not establish that the entire page or course meets an accessibility standard.
Try the retrieval task
Give a colleague this fictional task: “You already reserved the camera, but the collection date has changed. Find the instruction that applies.”
Ask them to identify the relevant section and explain why they chose it. Note any ambiguous label or missing condition. This small review can reveal a problem worth correcting; it does not establish how all learners will perform.
Then try a second task: “You have not booked anything yet. Find what you must check first.” A clear outline should distinguish preparation from an existing-booking change.
Figure 3. Compare the section a learner chooses with the section that answers the task.
Use what you observe to revise one label or relationship, then repeat the affected check. Keep a record of the original problem and the final rendered result.
Take one page through the process
Choose a page learners revisit to complete a task. Extract its heading outline, compare it with the tasks it supports, repair misleading labels or relationships, and verify the saved output.
If the same problem appears across a resource hub, it may need a shared content structure rather than isolated title edits. The Instruction Edit’s learning website and resource-hub services can help define that structure.
Primary reference: W3C WAI, Page Structure Tutorial: Headings.
This article’s example and process are original editorial material. The reference supports the explanation of semantic structure and heading nesting; it does not establish an outcome for this example.
