Who is this article written for??

This is written for an audience that has a basic understanding of HTML design. We will take at a big picture look at the specifications and how the language in the specification affects its use and interpretation. We will cross-reference specifications and the Web Logs of ‘Experts’ in the accessibility and standards communities.

Introduction

There was a huge not-so-conclusive debate on the GAWDS mailing list (last week of March) regarding the use of the <h1> tag. What really got people jumping was wondering whether it was OK to use more than one <h1> tag per document. It is well known in the development community that the specification does not explicitly prohibit this. With this in mind I am going to examine the W3C’s specifications and the WCAG’s to come up with an answer as to how the <h1> tag should be used. Will there be definitive answer – No, but best practices will be covered.

To really understand how header tags, more specifically the <h1> tag, should be used we need to look at the title and link elements and see how they are supposed to be used. When we better understand them it will become more apparent how the <h1> tag should be be utilized.

The Title and Link Elements should provide for context and the <h1> tag should reflect the topic of the document.

Usage of the h1 Tag

We have the title element and the link element to show how a specific page relates to the rest of the site, topic, or content external to itself. The link element shows how the page relates to other pages in the collection (either topically or site wide) on a page basis relative to itself, and the title shows how the page relates to other pages on a topical basis relative to the topic/content. What is left to do? Tell what the page is about and that is what the <h1> tag should be about.

Having said that I am now going to say something that really seems counter-productive. The real problem with the spec is the examples that they use to support the spec and the language they use. There are a few different ways  to interpret the spec and examples that support and contradict these interpretations. How you decide to implement the spec all depends on which statements and examples hold credence for you. There are three  schools of thought here: There is only one H1, there can be multiple H1’s , and the headers denote Importance rather than structure schools. I will no explain how these schools are derived from the spec and the examples that support and contradict them.

Structure and Relative Importance

The one statement that many people key in on the Headings Section is the following statement There are six levels of headings in HTML with H1 as the most important and H6 as the least. Visual browsers usually render more important headings in larger fonts than less important ones. It is thought that the header tags are used to denote importance and not structure. This is the only statement that supports this, the rest of the reviewed material supports their use determining document structure. Structure, structure, structure…

The areas of the HTML 4.01 specification that I found the most informative of this topic are as follows: The Global Structure of an HTML Document, 12.3 Document Relationships: The Link Element. I referenced the XHTML 2.0 specification to see where the technology was heading which will give further perspective to its correct use. The 2.0 specification generally mirrors the 4.01 spec. If there are illuminating differences I will mention them. I start the big picture look here with the specification by referencing the link and title elements as well.

More than one

So now we have the subject of more than one <h1> tag on a page. Do the specs explicitly forbid it? NO. Do they give example to promulgate the belief that it is acceptable? Yes. Should you do it? My belief is No.