Heading Levels (Desktop and Advanced Editor)

Why headings are important 

Headings in a PDF can be used to convey the structure, organization, and relationships between sections in a document. Similar to how a person with sight might use bookmarks in a PDF, a screen reader can read a list of headings.  This allows the user to quickly locate a particular section in the document that they would like to read.  For this reason, it is important that heading levels are used in a correct and logical manner. 

How to organize headings 

It may be helpful to think of heading level organization similar to that of an outline.  For example, the title of the document would be assigned “H1,” major sections, like chapters in a book, would be tagged as “H2,” and subsections within chapters would be marked as “H3.” 

Tip:  As mentioned in the PDF Remediation Workflow Article, it may be helpful to print out the table of contents (if there is one) and mark the heading levels in the margin, for quick reference, before beginning remediation.    

Am I allowed to have more than one H1? 

We’re often asked, “Are we allowed to have more than one H1 in a document?” 

There are, essentially, two schools of thought on this but the one we go with, given the current (WCAG 2.1 and PDF/UA-1) standards is that, in the vast majority of cases (around 99%), you’re only allowed to have one H1 and it should be used for the title of the document.

If you think about what we’ve stated above, that headings are used to convey hierarchy, organization, and relationships, then, in the majority of cases, all of the sections of a document – the various chapters, for example, would be “subordinate to” the title.  So, if the title is an H1 then everything below it would be an H2 or lower. 

That said, there are rare but legitimate exceptions to the "rule," and it is possible, although unlikely, to have a document with more than one H1.  In addition, it’s worth noting that, when the PDF/UA-2 standard is published and supported by processors and assistive technologies, then this rule will change.  Then, the title of the document should be put into a Title tag and you will be allowed to have multiple H1 tags, for the headings at the beginning of each chapter, for example.  That, however, is not the case yet.  So, for now, stick with the rule of having only one H1 per document.   

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