Write page titles that describe the page
The title is the first thing a screen reader announces, the label on the browser tab, the line in a search result and the name of the bookmark. G88 asks that it identify the page, and W3C counts it as sufficient for the page-titled rule at Level A, using a more specific technique, which in HTML is the title element. Three things make a title work. It names the subject of that page, it makes sense read out of context with nothing around it, and it is short. Order matters more than most teams expect. The distinctive words go first, because a tab shows about twenty characters and a screen reader announces the whole title before anything else on the page. Ten tabs that all open with your company name are ten tabs nobody can tell apart.
How we find it in an audit
We pull the title of every audited page and read the list on its own, out of context, which is exactly how a screen-reader user and a search engine both meet them. Duplicates get flagged, and so do titles carrying the brand and nothing else. Single-page applications get a specific check, since a title that never updates as the view changes leaves the tab and the history stuck on whatever loaded first. Checkout flows get the closest look, because that is where a person most needs to know which step they are standing on.
How affected users experience it
A screen-reader user hears the title before the page, so it answers the question did the right thing load. When every page in a checkout carries the same title, that question has no answer and they have to read into the page to find out where they are, at every step. Somebody with a cognitive disability working across several tabs meets the same problem in another form, because the tab strip becomes a row of identical labels and the only way to find the right one is to open them all.
Passes vs. fails
Passes
Checkout | Aurora Jewelry, and Gold twist ring | Aurora Jewelry, so the distinctive part comes first in every list of titles.
Fails
The checkout, product and returns pages are all titled Aurora Jewelry, so browser history shows one name ten times over.
How this gets tested
The W3C publishes test rules that define what a checker looks for here.
- HTML page has non-empty titleA tool can check this
- HTML page title is descriptiveA tool can check this
Other ways to satisfy this rule
5 guides on this site are filed under 2.4.2 Page Titled. W3C lists this one as sufficient for that rule when it is implemented through a more specific technique, so the condition is part of the test rather than a footnote to it.
This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique G88: Providing descriptive titles for web pages. W3C publishes its techniques as guidance rather than as the standard, and says so on every one of them. The success criterion is what conformance is measured against, and a technique is one documented way to meet it.