WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

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

for

From: Dave Merrill
Date: Apr 17, 2013 11:27AM

Steve, thanks very much for taking the time to weigh in here, I appreciate
it, very useful feedback.

Re other ARIA markup, if you have a heading as the first item inside a
semantic container, is there any point to linking the two explicitly
with aria-labelledby
on the container pointing to the heading?

The most recent screen reader users survey shows one real-world perspective:
- Headings are by far the most used in-page navigation
- Most reader users are now aware or ARIA landmarks but usage frequency is
quite varied
- The most-reported accessibility blockers are inaccessible Flash and
CAPTCHA, not information discovery

That survey is here (which I'm sure you all know):
http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey4/


On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Steve Green <
<EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> 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
>
>