WCAG 2.4.2: Page Titles

WCAG 2.4.2 is simple enough (page titles are your friend) but we know how much you enjoy reading detailed WCAG guidelines, so here we go!

As we discussed in our previous post, sighted users tend to have an advantage in navigating websites because they can see all the elements of a page laid out together. It’s easy to take for granted, but anyone who doesn’t possess that visual context, such as someone using a screen reader, may have to take extra time to tab through the various content blocks on a page in order to figure out what it’s about.

One way to help ensure that navigating your site is a simple and enjoyable experience for everyone is to include a descriptive title on each page. That means a title which conveys the topic or purpose of the page in question.

On an HTML webpage, you can set a descriptive title using the “<title>” element. Once set, the header will appear in your browser window’s title bar or as the name of the tab containing the page. That way, any user can easily figure out where they are and find the content they’re looking for without having to search through the site for context clues.