RE: HTML techniques - Title element (no blocker)

Agreed.  Every page should have a unique and informative <title> element
that allows users to orient themselves with confidence.  It's even
better if the <title> corresponds closely to link text elsewhere on the
site-- this makes it much easier  to be certain  that one has followed
the corect link and arrived at the correct place.

For example, if the link text reads "How-tos and Demos," the <title> on
the destination page should contain that phrase.

John


"Good design is accessible design." 
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John Slatin, Ph.D.
Director, Accessibility Institute
University of Texas at Austin
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email jslatin@mail.utexas.edu
web http://www.utexas.edu/research/accessibility/


 



-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-gl-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Geoff Deering
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 12:31 am
To: Yvette P. Hoitink; w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: RE: HTML techniques - Title element (no blocker)



Pre Google, the title element and its contents were a major factor in
search engine rankings.  The title was used totry to define the content.
Even now, on Intranet searches it greatly aids usability by having
carefully thought out and definitive titles.  Lots of Intranets and
internal search engines are just a mess of indistinguishable documents
with titles and abstracts blurring into each other because of the lack
of attention given to this issue.  Given that users search so much, its
amazing that so little effort is put into managing this.  But then again
document management is not an easy issue.

Geoff

-----Original Message-----
From: Yvette P. Hoitink

Regarding the HTML techniques draft, I think something is missing in the
Title element technique:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/WD-WCAG20-HTML-TECHS-20031020.html#title

Here it just says that you should use the title element to define in a
simple phrase the purpose of the document.

What I think is very important, is that this description is specific to
the page. I see a lot of websites where every page has the same title,
for example the name of the organization. I think it would be wise to
make it explicit that titles should preferably be unique within a
website.

Yvette Hoitink
CEO Heritas, Enschede, The Netherlands

Received on Monday, 3 November 2003 12:54:35 UTC