Formatting options include larger text, bold, italic or underlined text, different colors, different fonts or a combination of any of these. Sighted users do instinctively understand the need to add headings – many long documents are filled with chunks of differently formatted text which indicate a new topic.
Examples of how formatting changes are used to indicate topic changes or sections within a document. The image below shows a set of headings within a Word document about the mountain laurel (the state flower of Pennsylvania). Semantic headings create a “clickable table of contents” for a document which can be extracted in a screen reader. Yet it’s one of the guidelines that is hard for many sighted users to conceptualize.
Inserting “Semantic headings” into documents is one of the most important accessibility guidelines for those who use screen reader software applications. 7 Headings and Generating a Table of Contents.6.2 Document Map in Word Online (Added June 14, 2023).6.1 Download Sample Word Mountain Laurel Documents.
