Paragraphs and Headings

Hello and welcome back to module 2 of our accessibility training. This video focuses on learning how to write paragraphs and format them in a way that is accessible to as many readers as possible. This video also focuses on understanding the importance of using headings, as well as how to craft good headings and sub-headings, and identifying and removing empty headings in your content.

Paragraphs are an important part of your page as they will most likely make up the bulk of your page content. To make your paragraph content easy to parse and understand, use the following paragraph-writing tips:

1. Use the inverted paragraph – describe the purpose of the page or the main point within the first paragraph.
2. Break up long paragraphs. They should be no more than 50 words per paragraph.
3. Write short sentences – ideally between 20 and 40 words.
   1. To cut down on sentence length, avoid filler words.
4. Break up the text with bullet points or lists. This makes it easier for users to read the information on the page.
5. Use standalone sentences—not incomplete fragments.
6. Use active voice and second-person pronouns. This is especially true when you are addressing the reader directly.
7. Stick to simple language and vocabulary that is appropriate to your audience. This can further assist readers to understand what you are trying to say.
8. Avoid using italics and all caps, when possible.

Another way to write good paragraphs is to combine them with good headings. Headings help organize your page, break up paragraphs, and help make your content scannable, accessible, and searchable.

The following are reasons why you want to make your content scannable, accessible, and searchable:

Scannable: People rarely read Web pages word for word. Instead, most readers scan the page and pick out individual words and sentences. Headings help highlight keywords and sentences while drawing readers’ attention to topics and points they might otherwise skim through.

Accessible: As per the AODA regulations, all new content must be AA WCAG compliant. Headings allow screen-reader and assistive technology users to skim the contents of a page and navigate to or skip over sections if they wish to do so.

Searchable: A good heading makes your page searchable as it contains keywords that are easily detected by search engines.

However, keep in mind that not all headings are good headings! The following are some tips to make sure that your headings (and sub-headings) are relevant, appropriate, and useful:

• Use headings that describe the content they contain
• Keep your heading short (about 8 words is ideal).
• The main goal of your heading should be orienting the user, not amusing them. So, don’t sacrifice clarity for the sake of cleverness – even if you have a good subheading idea.
  • The same goes for prioritizing searchability over usability. Remember that the user’s experience matters much more than their search engine’s experience.
• Place your keywords closer to the front of your heading. This will make it easier for readers to orientate themselves on your page.
• Use proper heading hierarchy. We will discuss this more in the next section.

In our templates, you can format your headings as heading 2 (H2), heading 3 (H3), or heading 4 (H4). These are not meant to be assigned arbitrarily, but rather follow a proper standard structure of heading placement.

Think of each heading as a container. The largest heading, H1, will always be the title, which contains everything on the page (including the rest of the headings). These contents will then be split up into sub-headings. H2 is the first subheading or topic, which can also be further divided into H3s and even H4s, further subheadings and topics. You can also take note of how our trainings are structured and organized for another example of proper heading hierarchy.

The example on the right has “learning outcomes” as the first subheading or topic (H2). “Module”, “video tutorial, and “take action” are all H2 subheadings and “transcript” is an H3 subheading under the H2 “video tutorial” subheading.

Sometimes there are empty headings that are left on the page, where only HTML heading tags are present, but no heading text.

To ensure you have no empty headers on your page:

1. Contact us for an accessibility report of your site or scan your pages for suspicious blank spaces.
2. Log into your site and edit the page where we reported the error.
3. Click on the Text tab to view the HTML that creates your page.
4. Search your page (using Control +F (Windows) or Command +F (Mac)) for empty heading tags. These are most likely to be <h2></h2> or <h3></h3> or <h4></h4>.
5. When you find them, delete them! You might need to remove a blank line if the empty header was sitting between two paragraphs.

In this module, you learned how to write paragraphs in a way that makes them accessible to as many people as possible as they will most likely make up the bulk of your page content. You also learned some tips to make your headings relevant, appropriate, and useful and how to use proper heading hierarchy.