Title attribute - useful for making a web page accessible?

Question

The sources I've read on making web pages accessible provide conflicting information on whether the 'title' attribute is actually useful. Some claim that it's best practice to give a web control a title attribute containing a more detailed explanation than the visible text on the control provides. Others claim that the default for most screen-readers is to ignore title attributes, so the attribute is useless in practice (except for providing tooltips for sighted readers). So, what do you folks recommend?

Answer 1

Not all screen readers ignore titles but some do. This is one of those areas though where it is best for you to include it as those who can get that content will. Plus search engines love title tags.

Answer 2

I'm actually encountering this problem with another Stack Overflow user right now in this question. Specifically, the reasons for a verbose title are:

• A good title communicates to your visitors a lot of information about what the page is about
• Google places higher weight on text within the title tag

However, this is lost on the user when they get to your page and have no idea what's going on just because you decided to game a search engine. Take Stack Overflow, for instance. A 50 word title may be good for Google, but how would you feel as a user if this question had the following title:

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Should I make the Title Attribute Longer In Order To Acheive a Higher Ranking on Google, or Should I Make it shorter to make it accessible and not drive my Users Crazy?

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In the end, while Google does matter; it doesn't matter more than keeping your user on your site once they are there; not to mention the benefit of a verbose title tag is lost on accessibility.

This website has a great article on the subject, and they write:

[...] The second reason has to do with SEO. Search engines need different information to rank the results of a particular query. Page title is one of the more important pieces of information they use to gauge how relevant your page is to a particular search term. This doesn’t mean you should load as many keywords as possible into the title — that defeats the first benefit — but you should ensure that each title succinctly describes the content of the page, including a couple of words you think people will search for. (Emphasis Added)

Answer 3

I use title on any links from my website as it is recommeneded by WC3 as per accessibility guideline 13.1 See http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT-TECHS/#tech-meaningful-links

For a lot of these accessibility issues bear in mind that what is not used now by an application may be used in the future so it's best to err on the side of doing too much rather than the bare minimum.