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From: Steve Green
Date: Aug 19, 2025 8:19AM

Without having seen the application, my inclination would be to make the application name <h1> because it is the highest level in the logical structure. The screen name would be <h2> because it is a subsection of the application. That said, I would not be terribly bothered if the application name isn't a heading at all as long as the name is mentioned in the <title> element. In this case the screen name would be <h1>.

Having observed countless hours of user testing, my view is that consistency from screen to screen is more important than what the heading levels are. Screen reader users have many different strategies for in-page navigation, and I have been surprised at how few jumped to the <h1> heading in our testing. Of course, this is a relatively small sample, and people may behave differently in a test session, although we hope they don't.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd