WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: ARIA landmarks, why are they not more descriptive?

for

From: Henny Swan
Date: Jan 29, 2013 4:25AM

I agree with Dylan's 5 steps. I'd also consider the following:

1. Place H1 immediately after the start of the 'main' landmark. This means
VoiceOver / iOS devices will read out 'landmark' and the heading together.
VO on iOS doesn't identify the what each landmark is (i.e. 'Landmark
main'), instead it reads 'landmark' and the content directly following the
landmark.

2. If more than one 'navigation' landmark are used per page consider
including ways to uniquely identify them. This could be a heading that
directly follows in the content order i.e. an H2 'Site links' or using
aria-label="Site links"

When implementing landmarks I try to remind myself of two things:

1. An already well structured page has less need for landmarks which are
really there to reach the parts other semantic can't reach.

2. Don't overdo landmarks otherwise what can be a simple page can become
cluttered with signposting making it time consuming to use. Verbosity
can introduce it's own set of issues.

I wrote a post about Usable Landmarks a while ago:
http://www.iheni.com/usable-landmarks-across-desktop-and-mobile/ There's
some good questions and discussion in the comments around the various costs
and benefits of landmarks.

Cheers, Henny





On 28 January 2013 21:38, Dylan Barrell < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Birkir,
>
> Here is the way that I recommend use of landmarks:
>
> 1) role="main" for the main content of the page and the container for the
> target of the skip to main content link (1 per page)
> 2) role="search" for the container of the search form (generally 1 per page
> but could be more)
> 3) role="banner" for the header of the page (1 per page)
> 4) role="contentinfo" for the footer of the page or the portion of the page
> that includes legal and copyright information (0 or 1 per page)
> 5) role="navigation" for any navigational container (generally more than 1
> per page)
>
> Other landmark roles are less common, you could use role="form" on all
> forms but this is somewhat redundant in most ATs and role="complementary"
> is always going to be somewhat open to interpretation.
>
> --Dylan
> > > >



--
www.iheni.com
@iheni