Organizing content so it has a logical flow just makes sense. Using chapters, headings, and sub-headings to organize a resource allows students to clearly see how the main concepts are related. In addition, headings are one of the main ways that students using a screen reader navigate through a chapter.
Who are you doing this for?
Everyone benefits from having content that’s clearly organized. Well-organized content supports students who:
Ann: “This allows me to go back and easily find the important points.”Jacob: “This gives me more control in navigating through the chapter. I can skip to the relevant section, instead of having to read the whole thing in a linear fashion.”
The Editor
The Editor has been configured for most of the needs contributors require. The layout is below; please refrain from using the advanced features in red until you are familiar with the LibreTexts structure. The Toolbar is the section located at the top of the editor window. It contains menu buttons that give you access to various functions of CKEditor. All buttons are grouped according to their function and include both simple operations (like basic text styling or formatting) and more advanced features (like inserting media or forms via a dialog window).
Figure 2.1.1: A simple layout of the editor. Tools in red are rarely used in the LibreTexts typesetting standard.
Why are headings important?
Headings help to identify the hierarchical structure of a document (e.g., sections, sub-sections). They provide a visual cue that helps sighted readers quickly navigate through sections of a document, skimming until they find the section they are looking for. Similarly, headings create logical divisions in the content and allow a non-sighted user to navigate a page or document easily using a screen reader.
When it comes to using visual references to indicate the hierarchy and structure of a document, you might be accustomed to changing the font style, enlarging the type size, or highlighting the text with bold, underline or italics to create the impression of a heading. This approach presents problems when creating material with accessibility in mind because screen readers won’t identify the text as a heading. Instead, the screen reader will just “read” through the text of a heading as if it were regular content, missing your intended cues about structure and organization.
What do you need to do?
In LibreTexts, use the visual editor to tag sections with Heading 2, sub-sections with Heading 3, sub-sections of sub-sections with Heading 4, and so on.
Figure 2.1.1: Heading options in the LibreTexts CK12 editor
Although LibreTexts provides up to six heading levels, that many levels might be difficult for your readers to keep track of. Levels 5 and 6 are reserved for textboxes described immediately below. Level 1, which is the highest, is reserved for the title of the page so within a page Level 2 is the highest. If you find yourself getting to four to six heading levels, consider breaking up your chapter into multiple chapters.
Textboxes with titles
If you are creating your textbook with LibreTexts, you might use some of the educational textboxes:
Figure 2.1.1: Copy and Paste Caption here. (Copyright; author via source)
For example
Example 2.1.1
Add example text here.
Solution
Add example text here.
These textboxes have two sections that are different colours. The section on the top is for the textbox title and the section underneath is for the textbox content. For people who can see the textbox, the different colours used in the textbox title communicate that the text is a title. However, this is not communicated to people using screen readers. As such, the textbox title needs to be marked as a heading.
In LibreTexts the textbox title is automatically assigned as Level 5 and the headings inside the textbox are assigned to Level 6
