Titles

Descriptive titles help users find content, orient themselves within it, and navigate through it. The title can be used to identify the web page without requiring users to read or interpret page content. Users can more quickly identify the content they need when accurate, descriptive titles appear in site maps or lists of search results.

The title of each web page should be as short as possible, identify the subject of the web page, and make sense when read out of context (for example by a screen reader or in a site map or list of search results). It may also be helpful for the title to be unique within the website. Note that most of our websites are automatically programmed to display the site name after the page title, so there is typically no need to include the site name when entering a title.

Headings

Web pages are often divided into a variety of sections. 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, but visual presentation is not sufficient to identify document sections.

Descriptive headings identify sections of the content in relation both to the web page as a whole and to other sections of the same web page. Authors should put the most important information at the beginning of each heading (for example, a heading in the "Students" section could be "Undergraduate Students"). The main heading should use "Heading 2" while subheadings should use "Heading 3" or smaller, in a properly nested way.

1. Highlight the text of your heading
2. Click on the first dropdown menu on the second row of the editor window
3. Select the appropriate heading style

Link Text

The text in a web link is intended to describe the purpose of the link. When the purpose of a link can be identified from its link text, links can be understood when they are out of context, such as when the user agent provides a list of all the links on a page.

In order to ensure that the purpose of your web links can be identified from their text alone, follow these steps when creating a link:

1. Ensure that the text of each web link is descriptive enough for the purpose of the link to be understandable even in the absence of any surrounding text.
2. If possible, use the title of the page you are linking to as the link text, provided the page title is descriptive enough.
3. When linking to a document, use the title of the document as the link text.
4. If there is more than one link on a website that leads to the same page or file, use identical link text for all such links.

Lists

When a website visually formats items as a list but does not indicate the list relationship, users may have difficulty in navigating the information. An example of such visual formatting is including asterisks in the content at the beginning of each list item or pressing enter after each item to create the appearance of a list. Follow these steps to properly create a list that can be read by assistive technologies:

1. Click on the first line of test in your list, or highlight all of your list items
2. Click the “Bullet list” or “Numbered list” button, as appropriate, to add list styling

Tables

Data tables must have proper captions and heading cells specified. This allows users with screen readers to know the purpose of the table. Captions should describe the type of information stored in the table, while any cell that contains a row or column label should be marked as a heading cell.

1. To add a caption, click on the border of a table and click the “Table” button, then click on "Table Properties". Check the box marked "Caption", then press “Ok”. Fill in the caption area that appears above your table.
2. To specify heading cells, click one of the cells that needs to be changed to a heading cell, then click the “Table” button and choose “Cell” and then "Cell Properties".  Change the "Cell type" to "Header cell”. Alternately, you can use the “Row” or “Column” menus under the “Table” button to change entire rows or columns to header cells.