WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: appropriate length for value of "title" attribute

for

From: Steve Green
Date: Sep 15, 2008 6:10AM

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Shrirang Prakash
Sahasrabudhe
Sent: 15 September 2008 06:22
To: ' <EMAIL REMOVED> '
Subject: [WebAIM] appropriate length for value of "title" attribute

Hi,
What should be the maximum length of text used as "title" for links or form
fields?
I believe, very long titles pose problems to screen magnifier users...
Can anyone share any experiences about use of title attribute and issues
arising there of?
Thanks.
Shrirang

--

'title' attributes do not need to be particularly long in order to cause
problems for screen magnifier users. You cannot specify a maximum length
because people use magnification levels up to 32x, at which point just a few
characters will fill the width of the page.

One source of frustration is when the user cannot get rid of the tooltip
because it is associated with an element that fills the screen at the zoom
level they are using. This can happen with images, and it is a particular
problem when 'title' attributes are applied to block-level elements such as
divs, because they may not be visible.

Similar problems occur when the CSS property display:block is applied to an
element that has a 'title' attribute. The element may not be visible in the
user's viewport, so there is no apparent reason for the tooltip's presence.

Steve