Section 1: The Title Attribute

In a previous section, you learned that some HTML tags provide information to web page visitors using assistive technologies to view web pages. In its most basic form the <a></a> tag doesn't offer much information to visitors using assistive technology. In fact, a basic link created with the <a></a> tags and an appropriately formatted href="" attribute would simply tell the visitor that there is a link on the page, but it would not explain anything else about the link.

To provide additional link information to visitors, web designers / web authors add the title="" attribute to the <a></a> tag. The value of the title="" attribute is text. The goal of the text is to provide additional information about the link. When the title="" attribute is added to the <a></a> tag a small informational box, with the text listed, opens over the link in question.

Let’s See it in Action: Adding the title="" Attribute