Does your blog post have sections? Get organized with headings.

A group called WebAIM recently did a survey of screen reader users - people who use software that reads a computer screen aloud for them. Out of 1100 screen reader users who responded, 76% of them said they always or often used headings to find the information they were looking for on a web page.

This is good news if you want to make your blog more welcoming for people with disabilities who use a screen reader, which includes some people with movement-related disabilities and learning disabilities as well as people with visual impairments. There are probably already some headings built into your template. Chances are, the titles of your posts are already marked as headings, making it easier for people using screen reader software to jump from post to post. Some people with certain disabilities find it easier to use text-only browsers, and they benefit from headings as well.

Your sidebars may also have some headings if you have titles for different sections or widgets; see Keep Your Sidebars Organized for more information on that topic. Within your posts, you can also use headings to organize your information or break up long posts. If you're writing a personal essay, it may not make sense to break up your posts into sections, although it can be used for effect. If you're writing an informational blog post with distinct sections, like a Top 5 post or a step by step tutorial, you may want to think about using headings.

The trick is to make sure you're using proper heading code instead of just making the heading bigger and bolder than your regular text by changing its appearance. Unfortunately, screen reader software can't really tell that you're made it purple. It just takes a quick tweak behind the scenes to add the right code. Search engines also look at text that is marked as a heading and they give it a little more weight when they're figuring out what the page is about.

I've added a section to the guide on How to Make Your Blog Accessible that walks through how to use heading code in your posts.

Take a look and let me know what you think.