Headings contain no text

Automated check empty-heading, run with axe-core

WCAG

Best practice: a recommendation, not a WCAG success criterion

Severity

Moderate: a degraded experience

Typical effort

Quick win, under 1 hour

Category

Page structure

Who this affects

Screen reader users navigating by heading.

Why it matters

Empty headings appear in the heading list as blank entries, adding noise to the main navigation tool.

How to fix it

Remove the empty heading, or give it text. Headings used purely for spacing should be a <div>.

Related checks: Page structure

• The page has no title
• Iframes have no title
• Several frames share the same title
• Heading levels are skipped or out of order
• The page does not declare its language
• The declared page language is not valid
• The lang and xml:lang attributes disagree
• The page header is nested inside another region

All checks