Page Titles

Page titles don’t have a UI element within our website or application and therefore often get overlooked. This is unfortunate because page titles are incredibly useful, especially from an accessibility perspective! The good news is that while they are easy to overlook, they are also easy to do correctly. This is one of those quick wins that we can incorporate into an existing project within the span of an afternoon, yet will have a noticeable impact on the accessibility of our website or application.

Significance of titles in navigation

Page titles exist to help orient the user within the scope of our website or application. They’re interesting because they don’t necessarily get displayed within the layout we’ve created. Rather, most users will see the page title via the browser. Browsers will show the title in two main ways: via tabs and in the bookmarks. Tabs show our page titles to help users differentiate pages when they have multiple tabs open. Bookmarks show page titles to help users find pages that they’ve saved for later. In both situations, it’s in our best interests (and the best interests of our users) to make our titles as descriptive and helpful as possible.