- Success Criterion 1.3.1
- Conformance level A
- W3C reference F2
Text Styled to Look Like a Heading Instead of Coded as One
1.3.1 — Info and Relationships
Scenario
Setting
A ride-hailing app's trip booking screen
What’s wrong
Text is made to LOOK like a heading or emphasized (big, bold, indented) using styling only, so screen readers treat it as ordinary text and users miss the structure.
Example
<div class="heading">Shipping Address</div>Why it matters
Screen-reader, braille, and reading-tool users who depend on coded structure rather than visual layout.
How to test
Inspect the 'heading' in DevTools: if it's a styled span/div/p instead of an h1-h6 tag, a screen reader won't announce it as a heading — check the Accessibility Tree.
How to fix
Use real heading markup (h1–h6) and semantic emphasis (strong/em) instead of styling plain text to look structural.
<h2>Shipping Address</h2>A real heading element exposes the section structure to assistive tech; a styled div doesn't.
Outcome
On a ride-hailing app's trip booking screen, this barrier is gone for screen-reader, braille — they reach the same outcome without extra effort.
Who is affected
Screen-reader, braille, and reading-tool users who depend on coded structure rather than visual layout.
Learn more
- Understanding Understanding document (opens in a new tab)
- Technique Related technique (opens in a new tab)
Related scenarios
- Text Columns Faked With Spaces Instead of Real Table Markup
- Table Layout Faked With Spaces Instead of Real Table Code
- Clickable Div Acting as a Link Button With No Real Role
- Structural HTML Tags Used Purely for Visual Styling
- Layout-Only Table Wrongly Coded With Real Header Cells
- Tabular Data Placed Inside a Preformatted Text Block