Do not put essential information in the title attribute

The title attribute can be used to specify additional information about an HTML element — about a hyperlink, for example. And when this information doesn’t just repeat the hyperlink text, the title text can be useful.

What should be avoided is placing in the title attribute important information that is not found anywhere else. The reason is that some users will not know about the text title:

• When you use the keyboard to navigate the page, most browsers do not show the title text (I don’t know one that would show).
• Most of the screen readers aloud are configured in such a way that they do not read the text title, as long as the user does not specifically ask for it.
• There is a delay before the title text will be shown to readers using a mouse and a graphical browser, so that they can pass by the text if they are not aware that it is there.

So use the title attribute when appropriate, but do not use it simply to repeat the text of the hyperlink, and do not put critical information in it.

This blog post is one of the Quick Tips. Details of the background are set out in “ Quick Tips for Web Developers and Web Designers .”