Proposed HTML page title is descriptive
Description
This rule checks that the first title in an HTML web page describes the topic or purpose of that page.
Applicability
This rule applies to the document title of each html web page, except if one of the following is true:
- The html web page has no document title; or
- The document title contains only whitespace text nodes.
Expectation
The target element describes the topic or purpose of the overall content of the document.
Background
The title
elements of embedded documents, such as those in iframe
, object
, or svg
elements, are not applicable because those are not web pages according to the definition in WCAG.
The HTML specification - The title
element requires documents to only have one title
element; and title
elements to be children of the head
element of a document. However, current HTML specification also describes what should happen in case of multiple titles, and titles outside the head
element. Because of this, neither of these validation issues causes a conformance problem for WCAG.
Assumptions
There are currently no assumptions.
Accessibility Support
- This rule assumes that browsers only recognize the first
title
element if multipletitle
elements are present in the document. Testing shows that this in general is the case. Therefore the scope of this rule is limited to only checking the firsttitle
element in a document.
Related rules
Bibliography
- Understanding Success Criterion 2.4.2: Page titled
- Technique G88: Providing descriptive titles for Web pages
- Technique H25: Providing a title using the title element
Accessibility Requirements Mapping
2.4.2 Page Titled (Level A)
- Learn more about 2.4.2 Page Titled
- Required for conformance to WCAG 2.0 and later on level A and higher.
- Outcome mapping:
- Any
failed
outcomes: success criterion is not satisfied - All
passed
outcomes: success criterion is satisfied - An
inapplicable
outcome: success criterion needs further testing
- Any
G88: Providing descriptive titles for Web pages
- Learn more about technique G88
- Not required for conformance to any W3C accessibility recommendation.
- Outcome mapping:
- Any
failed
outcomes: technique is not satisfied - All
passed
outcomes: technique needs further testing - An
inapplicable
outcome: technique needs further testing
- Any
H25: Providing a title using the title element
- Learn more about technique H25
- Not required for conformance to any W3C accessibility recommendation.
- Outcome mapping:
- Any
failed
outcomes: technique is not satisfied - All
passed
outcomes: technique needs further testing - An
inapplicable
outcome: technique needs further testing
- Any
Input Aspects
The following aspects are required in using this rule.
Test Cases
Passed
Passed Example 1
This title
element describes the content of the document.
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>Clementine harvesting season</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>
Clementines will be ready to harvest from late October through February.
</p>
</body>
</html>
Passed Example 2
This title
element, the first of two, describes the content of the document.
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>Clementine harvesting season</title>
<title>Second title is ignored</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>
Clementines will be ready to harvest from late October through February.
</p>
</body>
</html>
Passed Example 3
This title
element, which is within the body
, describes the content of the document. Even though it is not placed within the head
element, as expected according to the HTML specification, the rule still passes because the browser fixes it and it doesn’t cause any known accessibility issues.
<html lang="en">
<head> </head>
<body>
<title>Clementine harvesting season</title>
<p>
Clementines will be ready to harvest from late October through February.
</p>
</body>
</html>
Failed
Failed Example 1
This title
element does not describe the content of the document.
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>Apple harvesting season</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>
Clementines will be ready to harvest from late October through February.
</p>
</body>
</html>
Failed Example 2
This title
element, the first of two, does not describe the content of the document. Most browsers, and this rule, only look at the first title
element.
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>First title is incorrect</title>
<title>Clementine harvesting season</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>
Clementines will be ready to harvest from late October through February.
</p>
</body>
</html>
Failed Example 3
This page has a generic document title. The title contains the website name, but does not describe the page.
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>University of Arkham</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Search results for "accessibility" at the University of Arkham</h1>
<p>None</p>
</body>
</html>
Inapplicable
Inapplicable Example 1
This title
element is a child of an svg
element.
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<title>This is a circle</title>
<circle cx="150" cy="75" r="50" fill="green"></circle>
</svg>
Glossary
Outcome
A conclusion that comes from evaluating an ACT Rule on a test subject or one of its constituent test target. An outcome can be one of the five following types:
- Inapplicable: No part of the test subject matches the applicability
- Passed: A test target meets all expectations
- Failed: A test target does not meet all expectations
- cantTell: Whether the rule is applicable, or not all expectations were met could not be fully determined by the tester.
- Untested: The tester has not attempted to evaluate the test subject.
Note: A rule has one passed
or failed
outcome for every test target. When a tester evaluates a test target it can also be reported as cantTell
if the rule cannot be tested in its entirety. For example, when applicability was automated, but the expectations have to be evaluated manually.
When there are no test targets the rule has one inapplicable
outcome. If the tester is unable to determine whether there are test targets there will be one cantTell
outcome. And when no evaluation has occurred the test target has one untested outcome. This means that each test subject always has one or more outcomes.
Outcomes used in ACT Rules can be expressed using the outcome property of the [EARL10-Schema][].
Web page (HTML)
An HTML web page is the set of all fully active documents which share the same top-level browsing context.
Note: Nesting of browsing context mostly happens with iframe
and object
. Thus a web page will most of the time be a “top-level” document and all its iframe
and object
(recursively).
Note: Web pages as defined by WCAG are not restricted to the HTML technology but can also include, e.g., PDF or DOCX documents.
Note: Although web pages as defined here are sets of documents (and do not contain other kind of nodes), one can abusively write that any node is “in a web page” if it is a shadow-including descendant of a document that is part of that web page.
Whitespace
Whitespace are characters that have the Unicode “White_Space” property in the Unicode properties list.
This includes:
- all characters in the Unicode Separator categories, and
-
the following characters in the Other, Control category:
- Character tabulation (U+0009)
- Line Feed (LF) (U+000A)
- Line Tabulation (U+000B)
- Form Feed (FF) (U+000C)
- Carriage Return (CR) (U+000D)
- Next Line (NEL) (U+0085)
Rule Versions
- Proposed version, 30 August 2023 (compare)
- Latest version, 30 August 2023
Implementations
This section is not part of the official rule. It is populated dynamically and not accounted for in the change history or the last modified date.
Implementation | Type | Consistency | Report |
---|---|---|---|
Axe DevTools Pro 4.37.1 | Semi-automated tool | Consistent | |
Trusted Tester 5.1 | Test methodology | Consistent |