Headings are short phrases or titles that describe sections of text on a page. They are distinct from regular body text and communicate the organization of content. To be accessible, they should be used in a meaningful, ordered hierarchy and should make use of proper encoding.
On the web, every heading has a level or rank: Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, and so on. These headings should be used in a meaningful hierarchy to form a document outline.
If headings are merely styled to look important, but not marked up in the code, web browsers, plug-ins, and assistive technologies cannot detect them, meaning that they are essentially not there for a broad range of users and technologies.
Create properly encoded headings by using the HTML tags for headings or by selecting Heading 1, Heading 2, etc. from a drop down menu in the text editor. The result is the same: proper HTML heading tags are applied to the underlying code.
<h1>Searching in BIOSIS</h1>
<h2>BIOSIS Search Fields</h2>
<p>One strategy to reduce our results and target our search is to take advantage of a couple of unique search fields, Major Concepts and Taxonomic Data.</p>
<h2>Helpful Tips for BIOSIS</h2>
<p>Clicking on a title in your search results will give you more information on the article and ways to access and save it.</p>
<p>...</p>
Links are a key part of much digital content. Making links accessible means making them perceivable (links should be visually distinct from surrounding text) and making the purpose or destination of the link understandable. As much as possible, the text of the link should itself communicate the destination or purpose of the link by being meaningful, understandable, and unique.
Link text should be understandable and should describe its purpose or destination, most often using the exact language of its destination.
The link to a page titled “Dinsdale Family Learning Commons” should read, Dinsdale Family Learning Commons, not “Our Library” or “more about this library” or "click here".
Link text should make sense to a human reader. The complete URL’s of webpages are usually not understandable and should generally not be used as the only indication of a link’s destination.
The link to the article “Gardens of misery and perfection: Introducing an annotated bibliography” should read, "Gardens of misery and perfection", or similar, not https://doi-org.libproxy.unl.edu/10.1080/14601170903528508
If several links within the content lead to different destinations, the text of each link should be distinct. Similarly, if several links lead to the same destination, their link text should be identical.
Links to the page titled "How to Export to RefWorks" should have the same title as the page. Links shouldn't have the same text, but go to different locations.
Using a broken link checker can help you quickly identify broken links in your digital content. Keep in mind these tools may not be able to work on all web content and may be taken offline at any time.
Check My Links is a link checker that crawls through your webpage and looks for broken links.
A SEO tool to find broken (404) and redirected (301, 307, 308) links in all frames
Lists are a structural element that indicates a relationship between text. There are 2 types of list, and each has a specific function.
Unordered lists (with bullet points) are used when there is no order or sequence of importance.
Ordered lists (with sequential numbers) are used when the progression or sequence is meaningful.
Lists make content more accessible by making it more readable, and communicating hierarchical relationships over different devices and assistive technologies.