Provide structure to your documents by using headings. All users benefit from visual and logical structure, but this is crucial for users of assistive technologies. When defining this structure, it is best to use styles, which is a feature that is already built into programs like Microsoft Word. It is not enough to just manually change text attributes, such as font and font-weight (bold, italics, etc.), rather, by designating items as various paragraph styles (such as heading 1, heading 2, etc.) you are allowing this structure to be tagged within your document. Assistive technology depends on these tags to allow users to quickly navigate between important sections in your document. Additionally, when you use styles it is still possible to visually configure them to match your aesthetic. To learn how to do this visit Microsoft’s documentation for customizing styles.

Tips for Headings

It is a common convention to use the level 1 heading for the title of your document. Since everything in your document will be a subheading of this, you should use only one level 1 heading.
Headings should be used hierarchically/nested sequentially. You should not skip heading levels, such as using a Heading 4 directly below a Heading 2. You may have multiple heading 2s, 3s, and so on, so long as the items have a similar level of structural importance (e.g., a heading 2 could be chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, but sections in each chapter might be heading 3s).
When possible try to adjust the styling of your headers so that they appear larger and more distinct than the surrounding text.

This is a really important point to remember: In both text and PDF documents, headers make up the table of contents and navigation points, for both visual and audio versions. If you only enlarge text to make an apparent header, that functionality is lost for the audio version.

In addition, formatting with actual headers makes the document easier for you, as well as your students, to work with. You can change the visual style of a document all in one swoop, if you’ve used proper headers.

In PowerPoint, this means using a slide layout with a Title field.

In Word, it means selecting your header text and then selecting “Heading 1”, “Heading 2”, etc. from the Quick Styles group at in the Home tab. In recent versions, you can also open up a full Styles Pane on the right and select your desired header level from the list there. See below for a screenshot of where to find various style options in Word.

How to use Headings

Google Docs

To insert headings in Google Docs, select styles in the Main toolbar and then pick the one you want to use.

If you want to change the look of a style in Google Docs, you modify a section of the text, select that text, select the style in the toolbar and then pick the option to have the style match the currently selected text.

Microsoft Word

In Microsoft Word, you can right-click a style in the Styles Gallery and select Modify which allows you to change many attributes that impact the way the text is displayed. If you would rather not use the Modify Styles dialog, you can also modify a section of text and then select that text. Next, you right-click the style and select the option to have the style match the currently selected text.

See Office Support on Styles for more information.