Understanding SC 2.4.2 Page Titled
Web pages have titles that describe topic or purpose. (Level A)
The intent of this success criteria is to provide clear & descriptive titles to the web pages so that they are understood easily by all users. This success criteria is helpful for visually challenged users, cognitive users, motor disable users & users with short-term memory. Titles of the pages will give a clear & concise picture to the user what the web page is about & what to expect on the web page. While 2.4.4 link purpose talks about the purpose of the link, it is a best practice to link to web pages using their respective page titles.
By reading the title of the page, user must understand the purpose of the page. Sccreen readers such as JAWS & NVDA provide a shortcut key insert+t to check the title of the page. If there is more than one tab opened, then user can just look at the title & identify which page he/she is working on. In addition to that, a unique title would also help the users to ensure whether they are on the right page/step. Moreover, providing unique title would help index the site properly by search engines.
Code Example
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
lt;html lang="en-us">
<head>
<header>
<title>ACCESSIBLE CAROUSEL EXAMPLE USING ARIA</title>
</header>
</head>
In the above example we can easily see that <title> is being used to provide the title for the web page. This is the attribute that provides title even when we are running websites on CMS platforms like WordPress or Drupal.
Hi Raghavendra,
Can we raise a bug under 2.4.2 if the page title is not marked as heading level 1?
Please advise.
Thanks,
Roopseh
Hi Roopesh,
The heading level H1 can be anything that conveys information on the page & provides hierarchical structure. If page title is not provided as H1 then it is not a failure. There can be an alternative heading level H1 on the page that is relevant to overall content. Hope this clarifies it.
Hi Raghavendra,
How would the success criteria be applied to hybrid mobile applications?
Hello Kalpesh,
The page title does not apply to mobile applications.