For each web page that has a page title, is this title relevant?
A screen reader user navigates with a dozen tabs open. To find the page of interest, they go through the titles one by one. If each tab displays "Welcome" or the site name, it's impossible to distinguish pages. Fifteen tabs without a relevant title is unreadable.
Criterion 8.6 does not require that a title exists — that is the role of criterion 8.5. It requires that this title be useful. Concretely, a relevant title identifies the subject of the page and makes it possible to find it in navigation history or in the browser's tab list. "Contact Us — My Site" is relevant. "Page", "Untitled" or the site name repeated identically on every page: not.
The recommended structure is "Page Subject — Site Name". Subject first: screen readers read the title upon loading, and the user wants to know where they are before knowing which site they are on. For a search results page, include the search term. For an order confirmation page, clarify the action performed.
Un test to assess the relevance of the page title
Relevance of <title> element content
- Open the page source code and locate the
<title>tag in the<head>. - Read the content of this tag. Ask yourself: if this title appeared alone in a navigation history or in a list of tabs, would it allow you to identify this page unambiguously among other pages on the site?
- If yes, the test is validated. If the title is generic (site name alone, "Page", "Untitled", empty string), the test fails.
Examples
❌ Non-compliant : Generic title repeated on all pages
<head>
<title>My Company</title>
</head>The company name alone does not distinguish this page from others. A user with five tabs from the same site open cannot tell which corresponds to the contact page, the pricing page, or the homepage. Navigation history is equally useless.
✅ Compliant : Descriptive title with subject and site name
<head>
<title>Pricing and Subscriptions — My Company</title>
</head>The page subject appears first, followed by the site name. In the tab list or browser history, the user immediately identifies the content. The screen reader announces "Pricing and Subscriptions — My Company" upon arrival on the page.
✅ Compliant : Relevant title for a dynamic results page
<head>
<title>Results for "web accessibility" — My Company</title>
</head>On a search results page, the title includes the search term entered. Two different searches produce two different titles, which allows the user to distinguish pages in their history. Without this detail, all searches appear identical.
Tips and pitfalls
⚠️ Site name as the only title on all pages
This is the most common error in audits. The CMS generates a <title> containing only the site name, identical on each page. Technically, a title exists — criterion 8.5 validated — but it is not relevant — criterion 8.6 failed. Check internal pages, not just the homepage.
💡 Subject first, site name second
Structure titles as follows: "Page Subject — Site Name". Browsers and screen readers truncate long titles on the right. If the site name is first and the title is truncated, the user only sees the site name — exactly the problem we are trying to avoid. W3C technique H25 confirms this recommendation.
⚠️ Confirmation and dynamic results pages
A order confirmation page with <title>My Site</title> fails criterion 8.6. The title must reflect the state: "Order Confirmed — My Site". For search results, include the search term and, if pagination is present, the page number.
⚠️ Vague title on error pages
Error pages (404, 500) often receive a title like "Error" or inherit the default template title. A title like "Page Not Found (404) — My Site" is both relevant and informative for the user who arrives via a broken link.
⚠️ The criterion only applies to pages that already have a title
The criterion's wording is precise: "for each web page having a page title". If the <title> tag is absent or empty, it is criterion 8.5 that is at fault, not 8.6. The two criteria are distinct and can fail independently of each other.
Frequently asked questions
Why is the site name alone insufficient as an RGAA page title?
No. A title that does not identify the subject of the page is not relevant under criterion 8.6. "My Company" on every page does not allow you to distinguish the homepage from the contact page. The test is simple: can this title be found in navigation history? If all pages have the same title, the answer is no.
How to structure the <title> RGAA between page name and site name?
The page subject first, the site name second. This convention is recommended by W3C technique G88. Practical reason: browsers truncate long titles on the right in tabs and history. If the site name comes first and the title is cut off, the user never sees the useful part.
How to audit criterion RGAA 8.6 quickly across an entire site?
Open several pages of the site in different tabs and look at the tabs: if you can identify each page only by its title, the criterion is probably validated. For a systematic audit, a crawler like Screaming Frog extracts all <title> tags from the site in one pass; duplicates and generic titles appear immediately in a CSV export.
Which RGAA criterion applies to <title> not updated in SPA navigation?
Both: criterion 8.5 (title present) if the <title> remains empty or absent on the client side, and criterion 8.6 (relevant title) if the title remains stuck on that of the homepage during internal navigation. The fix involves dynamically updating document.title on each route change, or using a dedicated component like <Head> in Next.js.