Summary

Meaningful titles allow users to find and navigate documents without having to first read them.

Techniques

Examples

Example 1 — Title that identifies chapter and work
<html …>
   <title>Chapter 1 — Hobo's Guide to the Universe</title>
Example 2 — Title for chapter section

In this case, a document is split into smaller chunks to meet vendor distribution requirements. Each chunk notes its position as a continuation, as there is no specific meaning beyond this.

<html …>
   <title>Chapter 1 - Continued (2 of 3) — Hobo's Guide to the Universe</title>

Explanation

Providing meaningful titles for all the documents in a publication allows users to quickly identify where they are, and in which work. Include as specific information as possible about the content (e.g., the primary heading of the section the document contains). Do use the title of the work as the title for every document.

Assistive technologies typically announce the title of each document when it is first loaded in a user agent, and use the titles to inform users of the nature of any tabs they have open. Depending on the type of user agent used, this behavior is the same.

In the absence of a title, an assistive technology will typically announce the file name of the document, which in most cases is not meaningful.

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