Page title should be well defined  
WAI / WCAG 1.0 Priority 2 checkpoint 13.2
 
 
Issue Description

The page has no valid TITLE.

 
 
How to fix

To define the title of the page include the following HTML code just below the HTML tag at the beginning of the document: 

<HEAD>
 <TITLE>
  Buy the best strawberries fields in the world
 </TITLE>
</HEAD>

With Dreamweaver this can be achieved in a more simple way: simply fill-in the title box on top of the Editor window.

Consider that titles, to be effective, have to satisfy the following conditions:

  • a title should be brief and informative
  • should not contain HTML tags
  • should be defined only once in a document.
 
 
Issue Explanation

The TITLE tag defines the document's title for:

  • browser windows
  • speaking browsers
  • bookmark lists
  • history lists
  • search engine results lists

A poor, or missing, TITLE would make the page much more difficult to locate and understand in any situation where the user is required to identify a window, figure out the context, selecting an item from a bookmark list or search results.
This often occurs when using assistive technology, since the page title is the first thing that is presented to the user and should clarify the new context brought by the page.

To be effective titles should be brief and informative (i.e. adequately describe the page).
Citing Nielsen, a page title needs to be a pearl of clarity.

Titles should not contain HTML tags, as they would not be interpreted by browsers (and would clutter the meaningful part of the title).

Finally, a page should contain exactly one title: if more than one is present only one of them will be considered by browsers.

Consider also that often screen readers, when presenting the available frames to the user, read the page TITLE of the framed pages (not only the TITLE attribute of the FRAME element). Therefore, it is important for page TITLEs of framed pages to be well defined and meaningful.