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Heading Rules

HTML Markup Details

h1 element
The h1 element should contain the title for the web resource and may contain the title of the website.
The page should contain at least one and no more than two h1 elements.
h2-h6 elements
The h2-h6 elements should identify major and minor sections of the web resource.
Headings should be properly nested following the heading levels represented by the numerical values of the heading elements.
  • h2 should be used as sub-heading after a h1
  • h3 should be used as sub-heading after a h2
  • h4 should be used as sub-heading after a h3
  • h5 should be used as sub-heading after a h4
  • h6 should be used as sub-heading after a h5

Accessibility Evaluation Rules

Hweadings Evaluation Rules
no. FAE 2007 FAE 2008 Description
1 Pass/Fail Pass/Fail

The page must contain at least one h1 elements.
2 Pass/Fail Pass/Fail

Heading elements that follow the last h1 must be properly nested.
3 N/A Pass/Fail

All headings (h1..h6) must contain content.
4 N/A Pass/Fail

Each container element that appears to be a navigation bar or menu must be immediately preceded by a heading element, typically a h2 element.
5 Pass/Fail Pass/Warning

The page should contain no more than two h1 elements.
6 N/A Pass/Warning

The words in the h1 element content should also be in the title element content. Spacing and punctuation in the content of the h1 and title elements are ignored. NOTE: If abbreviations are used in the title and/or h1 content, they will be replaced by their expansion defined in abbr and acronym elements defined on the web resource before comparisons between the title and h1 are made.
7 N/A Pass/Warning

The content of headings of the same level within the same section should be unique.
8 N/A Pass/Check

The content of headings should be concise (less than 65 characters).
9 Pass/Fail N/A

The h1 element content must exactly match a substring in the title element content.
10 Pass/Warning/Fail N/A

The text content contained in header elements (h1..h6) should range between 1 and 20 percent, inclusive, and not exceed 50 percent of the total text content of the page.

FAE Rule Implemetation

FAE 2007
The Illinois Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) currently implements FAE 2007 rules.
The Illinois Firefox Accessibility Extension currently implements these rules.
FAE 2008
The FAE 2008 rules are designed to optimize the rules for implementation of Section 508, W3C User Agent Accessibility Guidelines and Illinois Information technology Accessibility Act requirements and are based on the requirements of these standards and experience with the problems of FAE 2007.
Illinois Functional Accessibility Evaluator Implementation of FAE 2008 rules is currently under development.
The Illinois Firefox Accessibility Extension currently implements some of these rules.

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