Accessibility Question about Heading Levels and Heading Styles

[caroline2210]

Noticed something odd about the heading styles/code which I'm hoping someone could shed some light on.

When creating a page in SharePoint, I noticed that the Heading Styles don't match what's in the code. 

For example, I can have text that I assign with 'Heading 1' from the text editor, but when I look in the code it's an <h2>. 

The only trouble I see in this is that a person who is trying to create content to meet accessibility requirements may think that the heading styles will assign the right header tag in the code but this isn't the case. 

The outcome will be confusing for users of screen readers. Does anyone know if this will be addressed or if there is a sound reason behind this approach? 

[#2]

@caroline2210 I have observed same in multiple tenants and I think this is by design in SharePoint.

I will suggest you to:

1. Raise a support ticket with Microsoft directly and report this: Get M365 support - online support 
2. Submit feedback/idea on SharePoint Feedback Portal 

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[#3]

@caroline2210 This is highlighted in Microsoft's Accessibility Conformance Reports.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/conformance-reports

Do a search for SharePoint Online and you can see it mentioned in the WCAG document in section: 1.3.1 Info and Relationships.

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Many Web Parts introduce a level 2 heading to pages without providing a means for users to change that heading level.

For headings added to pages using the Text Web Part, the heading level the page author specifies is downgraded by one when presented to the end user (e.g., a heading a page author sets to level 1 will be presented as a heading level 2 in the final HTML). The purpose of this is to ensure that the page title is always the only heading level 1 on the page and to avoid conflicts with heading levels when users copy and paste from other sources.

Tables added with the Text Web Part do not have column or row headers defined.

[#4]

@ganeshsanapThank you!  I can only submit feedback so please upvote my feedback (https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/aca4ea8b-ba5a-ed11-a81b-000d3a7e4185)....the more people that upvotes it, the better chance that MS will actually fix this SERIOUS issue.