The layout of the main section
must be composed in such way that there is a hierarchy of information, which
must be coherent throughout. To ensure that:
- Heading styles must be used for heading and underlying headings. These could be differentiated from the body text, either by size, color or font type.
- Underlying heading levels must be used as they provide the document with a built-in structure that is accessible to screen readers.
- Text that needs prominence may be highlighted in bold or set in quotes separately.
- Bullet points should be prominent if used in the text, and should have a unique style.
- Images should be positioned smartly on the page, without jeopardizing main content.
- The amount of white space on content pages should be restrained as it increases the scrolling level unnecessarily.
- h) An ‘increase/decrease text’ option, as well as ‘share’ and ‘print’ features on all sub-pages of the site should be displayed. This improves both accessibility and usability. See section Accessibility. The ‘share’ feature can be restricted to sharing by email but may include a more comprehensive Social sharing and bookmarking services that could be considered to allow the user to share the page on his preferred social network (Facebook, Twitter and others). See section Social Media.
- To avoid/minimize page scrolling, content should be split on multiple pages and pagination should be used.
- Pagination should be positioned at the bottom of the page. Always display the number of pages and clearly mark the page the user is on (by using bold text and deviating text size).
- Pagination may also be repeated at the top should the page be too long (e.g. in search results and other types of listing pages).