Understanding Success Criterion 2.4.6: Headings and Labels

Intent

The intent of this Success Criterion is to help users understand what information is contained in Web pages and how that information is organized. When headings are clear and descriptive, users can find the information they seek more easily, and they can understand the relationships between different parts of the content more easily. Descriptive labels help users identify specific components within the content.

Labels and headings do not need to be lengthy. A word, or even a single character, may suffice if it provides an appropriate cue to finding and navigating content.

Benefits

• Descriptive headings are especially helpful for users who have disabilities that make reading slow and for people with limited short-term memory. These people benefit when section titles make it possible to predict what each section contains.
• People who have difficulty using their hands or who experience pain when doing so will benefit from techniques that reduce the number of keystrokes required to reach the content they need.

• This Success Criterion helps people who use screen readers by ensuring that labels and headings are meaningful when read out of context, for example, in a Table of Contents, or when jumping from heading to heading within a page.

  This Success Criterion may also help users with low vision who can see only a few words at a time.

Examples

• A news site.

  The home page of a news site lists the headlines for the top stories of the hour. Under each heading are the first 35 words of the story and a link to the full article. Each headline gives a clear idea of the article's subject.

• A guide on how to write well

  A guide on writing contains the following section titles: How To Write Well, Cut Out Useless Words, Identify Unnecessary Words, etc. The section headings are clear and concise and the structure of the information is reflected in the structure of the headings.

• Consistent headings in different articles

  A Web site contains papers from a conference. Submissions to the conference are required to have the following organization: Summary, Introduction, [other sections unique to this article], Conclusion, Author Biography, Glossary, and Bibliography. The title of each Web page clearly identifies the article it contains, creating a useful balance between the uniqueness of the articles and the consistency of the section headings.

• A form asking the name of the user

  A form asks the name of the user. It consists of two input fields to ask for the first and last name. The first field is labeled "First name", the second is labeled "Last name"."

Related Resources

Resources are for information purposes only, no endorsement implied.

• How Users Read on the Web A study showing that most users scan Web pages rather than reading them word by word.
• Applying Writing Guidelines to Web Pages A report on the effects of making Web sites concise, easy to scan, and objective.

Techniques

Each numbered item in this section represents a technique or combination of techniques that the WCAG Working Group deems sufficient for meeting this Success Criterion. However, it is not necessary to use these particular techniques. For information on using other techniques, see Understanding Techniques for WCAG Success Criteria, particularly the "Other Techniques" section.

Key Terms