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Re: Value and prioritization of large-scale things a web site can do for improved accessibility

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From: Steve Green
Date: Apr 17, 2013 10:51AM

To take your points in order, my opinion would be:

1. Yes, use HTML5 semantic elements. That is already useful and will become increasingly so.
2. ARIA landmark roles can be useful so they are worth adding.
3. Other ARIA markup is likely to be less useful, especially in generic templates. Given that there is a cost to everything, I see this as a low priority.
4. Title attributes on links only add value if they are different from the anchor text and provide necessary additional information. That is rarely going to be the case in templates. Unnecessary tooltips have an adverse effect on some users, so that has to be balanced against the benefit of providing them. This is one of many cases where an accessibility feature is not necessarily either beneficial or neutral.
5. Set the title attribute for content containers would be a definite No for me. It would particularly impact screen magnifier users because the tooltips are proportionately larger than usual and a tooltip would always be present no matter where the mouse is moved.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd