In developing a new site at work, I was exploring what character to utilize as a the separator in the title tag between elements. For example:
“Professional Background : About Keefr : Keefr”
Obviously, I’m well-versed in the best way to set things up for search engine optimization: with the most specific stuff showing up first (“Professional Backgound” in our example), but in the search for characters to separate each level, I came across an article related to accessibility and your character selection. People with impaired vision often utilize screen readers to surf the web, a computer voice reading back the text, including the title tag element.
While the article is six years old, the concept is still the same and valid. Those special characters can be a bit annoying when voiced my the screen readers, and it looks like the vertical pipe, bullet and dash are your best choices.
While many don’t typically think about the implications, simple changes like this, and the inclusion of things like valid alt tags can go a long way for accessibility, while simultaneously being a best practice for SEO and just being polite to what is often a very diverse audience.
