[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

I think he is referring to the title in the head. If so, then there is another plugin (Access-Aide Accessibility Helper) that will automatically add the title based on the (first?) header tag <h1-6>.

Yep, that's probably the best/fastest way to mass add <title>s to your ebooks now.

One of the functions can look for the first heading, then auto-insert that text into the <title> for you.

WAY WAY easier/faster than it used to be.

Originally Posted by Karellen

What should be in there?
In the early days I read somewhere it should be the book title. But now your comments sounds like it shouldn't be.

We covered <title> in ebooks (and web pages) multiple times over the years.

It can be blank:

<title></title>

it should NEVER have this bogus auto-generated junk:

<title>converted_file1.xhtml</title>

and, ultimately, it would have useful, human-readable information:

<title>Chapter 1: The Beginning</title>

[...]

<title>“The Ultimate Poem” by Tex</title>

For more information on what good <title>s should say + strategies for naming <title>s + where they might appear, see:

• WebAIM: "Page Titles"

for more info about <title> in ebooks, see my discussion in:

• 2018: "Two questions"
  
  • I covered <title> + HTML lang.

and all those relevant pages/links I linked to for more technical details.

- - -

Side Note: I wasn't aware any ereaders that actually displayed the <title> stuff yet, but it's good to see it might finally be rolling out + changing since 2016/2018ish.

(I always included it as best practices... because many users, like those using Screen Readers [or reading ebooks in their browsers], could see this info in the tabs or could have it read out loud... just like if they were reading a page on a website!)

Side Note #2: So many tools, like InDesign, automatically insert filenames inside the <title>. This is horrible, and WORSE THAN NOTHING/BLANK.

Just like shoving filenames inside of alt tags is an atrocious idea:

<img alt="Image01.jpg" src="../Images/Image01.jpg"/>

better to have alt be completely blank:

<img alt="" src="../Images/Image01.jpg"/>

or, the best—and what you should aim for—is to have useful alt + human-readable filenames!

<img alt="The Mona Lisa (1503) by Leonardo da Vinci" src="../Images/Mona.Lisa.jpg"/>

For more info, see:

• 2022: "Remove blank pages"
  
  • One of the examples I gave was showing the user's original alt tags (just listing the filename) vs. a better description.
    
• 2016: "Accessibility question: TTS and ligatures"
  
  • I linked to WCAG's alt recommendations.
    
• 2021: "pageList... again? Surely not!"
  
  • I linked to DAISY's fantastic 3-part webinar on alt-text: "The Art and Science of Describing Images"
    
• 2021: "Automation of scanning on phone or tablet"
  
  • Towards the bottom of the post, I linked to the fantastic DAISY video: "Describing Images in Publications – Guidance, Best Practices and the Promise of Technology" + many more resources.
    

Many of those best practices + similar reasons for alt tags applies to <title>s too.

It's not anything you can see with your own eyes, on the surface, but once you begin interacting with ebooks in different ways (like Text-to-Speech), this "hidden layer" becomes much more important.