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

for

From: Bryan Garaventa
Date: Apr 17, 2013 12:22PM

One thing to be aware of, ARIA such as aria-labelledby cannot be used to
link two static elements. Nothing will be announced to screen reader users
during navigation.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Merrill" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
To: "WebAIM Discussion List" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2013 10:27 AM
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Value and prioritization of large-scale things a web
site can do for improved accessibility


> 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
> > >