Page must contain a level-one heading

Rule ID: page-has-heading-one

Ruleset: axe-core 4.4

User Impact: Moderate

Guidelines: Deque Best Practice

Learn Web Accessibility

Subscribe to our extensive curriculum of online self-paced courses

Learn More about Deque University

Compliance Data & Impact

User Impact

Moderate
▼

Minor

Critical

Disabilities Affected

Sighted Keyboard Users
Blind
Low Vision
Deafblind

Standard(s)

Deque Best Practice

How to Fix the Problem

Ensure that the page or at least one of its frames contains a level-one heading.

Generally, it is a best practice to ensure that the beginning of a page's main content starts with a h1 element, and also to ensure that the page contains only one h1 element.

Usually the best practice is to start the main content of a web page with a level 1 heading (h1), with no other headings before this high-level heading. Mark the sub-sections of the page as level 2 headings (h2). If the level 2 sections contain sub-sections, mark these children as level 3 sections (h3) and so on.

The heading hierarchy of an iframe SHOULD be designed to fit within the heading hierarchy of the parent document, if possible. If you have control over the content of the embedded document in the iframe, the best practice is to fit the iframe heading hierarchy into the proper place within the existing heading hierarchy of the parent page. If the parent document is structured with a single h1 at the top of the content (this is a recommended best practice), the iframe ought to take this into account, and not start with another h1. The iframe document ought to start with h2 if the content is a direct child of the first heading on the page, or if it is a child of a level 2 heading, then the first heading of the iframe should be h3, and so on.

When iframes contain content from third-party websites — as is often the case — it is not always possible to control the heading hierarchy. Because of the lack of control in these situations, the guidelines don't strictly require the heading hierarchies of the two documents to match, but it would still be better if they did.

Why it Matters

Screen reader users can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate directly to the first h1, which, in principle, should allow them to jump directly to the main content of the web page. If there is no h1, or if the h1 appears somewhere other than at the start of the main content, screen reader users must listen to more of the web page to understand its structure, wasting valuable time.

Keep in mind that blind users can't just look at a web page and immediately understand its layout the way that a visual user can. Visual users can take in much information about the page layout without having to read all of the content. Blind users don't have that luxury. Screen readers read linearly, which means listening to the entire web page unless there is some other convenient way to get a "glimpse" of the page's layout and structure. It turns out that headings are a way to do that. Screen reader users can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate through the heading structure of a document.

Rule Description

Ensures that the page, or at least one of its frames, contains an h1 element that appears before the start of the main content to allow screen reader users to use keyboard shortcuts to navigate the heading structure instead of wasting time listening to more of the web page to understand its structure.

The Algorithm (in simple terms)

This rule finds all elements which match the following selector and verifies that there is at least one: h1:not([role]), [role="heading"][aria-level="1"]