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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: Detlev Fischer
Date: Apr 17, 2013 11:49AM

Hi Dave,

One thing not on your list I would throw in because it makes a big difference to keyboard users AND will be relatively easy to implement via CSS: making sure that you have always have good visibility of current keyboard focus on interactive elements when tabbing through content. From my experience of testing sites, even on sites with decent overall focus visibility, I often find areas where the focus is difficult to see.

Best, Detlev

On 17 Apr 2013, at 19:27, Dave Merrill wrote:

> 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
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto:
>> <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Dave Merrill
>> Sent: 17 April 2013 16:55
>> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> Subject: [WebAIM] Value and prioritization of large-scale things a web
>> site can do for improved accessibility
>>
>> Hi folks, first post, hope it's not unwelcome-ly long or obvious. By way
>> of intro, I'm a developer at a web software company, not an accessibility
>> expert. I've recently gotten interested in accessibility, and if there are
>> things we can do to improve access, without a lot of complexity either for
>> us to build or for our users to user, I may be able to get some of that in.
>>
>> By "large-scale", I mean page structure changes that can be done on the
>> site's main templates, rather than hand-tweaked changes to each page. For
>> example, the one step of applying ARIA landmark roles is in reach for many
>> sites, just by updating their blog or content management software
>> templates. Doing the whole nine yards to annotate every widget's
>> interaction state is much harder, unless the underlying platform already
>> does it.
>>
>> Here are some possible steps a site could take, that are all relatively
>> low-hanging fruit:
>>
>> - Place all content within HTML5 semantic container tags, specifically
>> article, aside ,nav, section, figure, figcaption, footer, header, and main
>> - Assign ARIA landmark roles to content containers and HTML headings
>> - Assign aria-label, aria-labelledby and aria-describedby attributes to
>> appropriate content containers
>> - Set the title attribute on links
>> - Set the title attribute for content containers (less desirable, since
>> it's seen by all, and containers aren't typically labelled this way)
>>
>> Which of those would you say are worth doing? Taken together, would they
>> make a real difference in accessibility? Are there other simple things that
>> could be done, ideally the page template level, rather than specific hand
>> tweaks for every page?
>>
>> (I'm specifically not talking about forms or interactivity, that's a whole
>> other topic. I'm also not talking about making sure HTML and image colors
>> have good contrast, not because it's unimportant, but because it has to be
>> done on a case-by-case basic, rather than in global templates.)
>>
>> Thanks in advance for any thoughts,
>>
>> Dave Merrill
>> >> >> messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> >> >> >>
>
>
>
> --
> Dave Merrill
> > > --
Detlev Fischer
testkreis - das Accessibility-Team von feld.wald.wiese
c/o feld.wald.wiese
Thedestraße 2
22767 Hamburg

Tel +49 (0)40 439 10 68-3
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