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Understanding Success Criterion 2.4.9 [Section Headings]

2.4.9 Where content is organized into sections, the sections are indicated with headings. (Level AAA)

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Note: "Heading" is used in its general sense and includes titles and other ways to add a heading to different types of content. [2230]

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The intent of this success criterion is to provide headings for sections of a Web page, when the page is organized into sections. For instance, long documents are often divided into a variety of chapters, chapters have subtopics and subtopics are divided into various sections, sections into paragraphs, etc. When such sections exist, they need to have headings that introduce them. This clearly indicates the organization of the content, facilitates navigation within the content, and provides mental "handles" that aid in comprehension of the content. Other page elements may complement headings to improve presentation (e.g., horizontal rules and boxes), but visual presentation is not sufficient to identify document sections.

  • People who are blind will know when they have moved from one section of a Web page to another and will know the purpose of each section.

  • People with some learning disabilities will be able to use the headings to understand the overall organization of the page content more easily.

  • People who navigate content by keyboard will be able to jump the focus from heading to heading, enabling them to find quickly content of interest.

  • In pages where content in part of the page updates, headings can be used to quickly access updated content.

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. The techniques listed only satisfy the success criterion if all of the WCAG 2.0 conformance requirements have been met.

  1. G141: Organizing a page using headings

  2. H64: Using the title attribute of the frame element [2097]

The following are common mistakes that are considered failures of Success Criterion 2.4.9 by the WCAG Working Group.

(No failures currently documented)

Although not required for conformance, the following additional techniques should be considered in order to make content more accessible. Not all techniques can be used or would be effective in all situations.

  • Using the 'live' property to mark live regions (future link) (ARIA)

  • Providing mechanisms to navigate to different sections of the content of a Web page (future link)

This Web page is part of Understanding WCAG 2.0: A guide to understanding and implementing WCAG 2.0. The entire document is also available as a single HTML file. See the Overview of WCAG 2.0 Documents for an explanation of how this document fits in with other Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 documents.

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