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Accessibility
Why must headings and tables be cleanly marked up in the code?
Headings and tables must be cleanly marked up in the code, because screen readers and search engines can only recognise a page's structure that way. A sighted visitor sees at a glance what's a heading and what's a table header — a blind visitor and Google only learn that if it's named that way in the code too. Bold text is not a heading.
Structure in the code: the page's table of contents
Screen readers offer blind visitors a shortcut: jumping from heading to heading, the way you'd skim a table of contents. That only works if headings are marked up as such in the code — with levels from H1 to H6, like chapters and subchapters. If the markup jumps straight from H1 to H4, it's like a book where section 1.1.1.1 follows chapter 1 immediately: the visitor wonders what they missed. The same goes for tables: only if the header row is marked as a header row can the screen reader announce, for every number, which column it belongs to. Google uses this structure too, to understand your content.
How our measurement engine checks page structure
The automated check combines two tools. The axe-core testing tool examines lists, description lists, and the technical links between elements. In addition, our own check steps cover two points axe-core doesn't cover in its standard run: skipped heading levels — such as H1 followed directly by H4 — and data tables with not a single marked header cell. Both are demonstrable violations and flow into the report as such. Important for context: this criterion is broad enough that an unremarkable automated run never counts as "passed" with us — the report then marks it as "manual review", and at the Gold Standard level a human judges the structure.
Clean structure pays off directly with Google
The same markup that lets blind visitors jump around also helps your findability: Google weighs headings when categorising a page, and is more likely to show well-structured content as a featured answer in search results. A page with exactly one main heading, sensibly staged subheadings, and real lists reads to the search engine like a well-organised document. Conversely, a page whose "headings" are just bold-formatted text throws this signal away entirely — to the machine, that's ordinary running text with no weight.
- Ask your agency for an overview of the heading levels on your most important pages — the levels should have no gaps, like a table of contents.
- Check your tables: every data table needs a first row or column marked as a header.
- Replace bold-formatted text that serves as a heading with real headings in your content management system.
- Use the list feature in your content management system instead of typing dashes by hand.
- Give each page exactly one main heading that names the page's topic.
FAQ
What do H1, H2, H3 mean for headings?
Those are the heading levels in a website's code: H1 is the page's main heading, H2 are chapters, H3 their subsections — down to H6. Screen readers and Google read these levels like a table of contents. The levels should follow each other with no gaps — so no jumping straight from H1 to H4.
Why isn't bold text enough as a heading?
Because bold formatting only changes the appearance, not the meaning in the code. A screen reader can't distinguish bold text from normal text and won't offer it when jumping through the page. Google doesn't recognise it as structure either. Only real heading elements carry the information "a section starts here".
How does the check detect tables with no header row?
Our measurement engine examines every table in the page's code: data tables with not a single marked header cell are reported as a violation. Purely layout tables that are explicitly marked as such in the code are exempt. Whether the structure is coherent overall is additionally judged by a human at the Gold Standard level.