HTML page has title

Rule Type:
atomic
Rule ID:
2779a5
Last modified:
Sep 25, 2019
Accessibility Requirements Mapping
2.4.2 Page Titled (Level A)
  • Required for conformance to WCAG 2.0 and above on level A and above
  • Outcome mapping:
    • Any failed outcomes: success criterion is not satisfied
    • All passed outcomes: success criterion needs further testing
    • An inapplicable outcome: success criterion needs further testing
Input Aspects
DOM Tree

Description

This rule checks that an HTML page has a title.

Applicability

The root element of the web page, if it is an html element.

Note: Documents embedded into other documents, such as through iframe or object elements are not applicable because they are not web pages according to the definition in WCAG.

Expectation 1

Each target element has at least one descendant that is an HTML title element.

Note: The title element exists in other namespaces such as SVG. These are not HTML title elements and should be ignored for this rule.

Note: The HTML 5.2 specification requires that a document only has one title element, and that it is a child of the head element of a document. However, HTML 5.2 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.

Expectation 2

For each target element, the first HTML title element that is a descendant of the document element has children that are text nodes that are not only whitespace.

Assumptions

There are currently no assumptions

Accessibility Support

There are no major accessibility support issues known for this rule.

Background

Test Cases

Passed

Passed Example 1

This page has a title with content.

<html>
<title>This page has a title</title>
</html>

Passed Example 2

This page title element is for the entire page, including content in the iframe without its own title.

<html>
<title>This page gives a title to an iframe</title>
<iframe src="/test-assets/sc2-4-2-title-page-without-title.html"></iframe>
</html>

Passed Example 3

This page has two title elements.

<html>
<head>
  <title>Title of the page.</title>
</head>
<body>
  <title>Title of the page.</title>
</body>
</html>

Passed Example 4

The title is in the body.

<html>
<body>
  <title>Title of the page.</title>
</body>
</html>

Passed Example 5

The first title element has content.

<html>
<head>
  <title>Title of the page.</title>
</head>
<body>
  <title></title>
</body>
</html>

Passed Example 6

The title only contains characters that are not letters or numbers.

<html>
<title>#$@&%*!</title>
</html>

Failed

Failed Example 1

The page has no title.

<html>
<h1>this page has no title</h1>
</html>

Failed Example 2

The title element is empty.

<html>
<title></title>
</html>

Failed Example 3

The page has no title.

<html>
<iframe src="/test-assets/sc2-4-2-title-page-with-title.html"></iframe>
</html>

Failed Example 4

The first title element is empty.

<html>
<head>
  <title></title>
</head>
<body>
  <title>Title of the page.</title>
</body>
</html>

Failed Example 5

The title only contains a separator character.

<html>
<title> </title>
</html>

Inapplicable

Inapplicable Example 1

This rule is not applicable to svg elements.

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
  <title>This is an SVG</title>
</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 three following types:

Note: A rule has one passed or failed outcome for every test target. When there are no test targets the rule has one inapplicable outcome. This means that each test subject will have one or more outcomes.

Note: Implementers using the EARL10-Schema can express the outcome with the outcome property. In addition to passed, failed and inapplicable, EARL 1.0 also defined an incomplete outcome. While this cannot be the outcome of an ACT Rule when applied in its entirety, it often happens that rules are only partially evaluated. For example, when applicability was automated, but the expectations have to be evaluated manually. Such “interim” results can be expressed with the incomplete outcome.

Whitespace

Characters that have the Unicode “White_Space” property in the Unicode properties list.

This includes:

Acknowledgements

Authors

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