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

for

From: Dave Merrill
Date: Apr 17, 2013 1:08PM

Would aria-labelledby be useful for static content whose best description
was NOT in the first heading inside it?

My overall goal to come up with a cohesive and useful set of tools for site
template designers to make their (largely static) content as widely
accessible as possible. In that sense, aria-labelledby might be worth
providing for the cases where it was useful, even if that wasn't most of
them.

But overall, as I think about it, I think the majority of our customer base
isn't that sophisticated about accessibility. They may well not have an
accessibility specialist even, just somebody with a flair for design and
some HTML experience, possibly also a coder, who's tasked with template
creation. For them, a simpler set of tools that was harder to make a mess
with is probably a better strategy.


On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 2:54 PM, Steve Green < <EMAIL REMOVED>
> wrote:

> I think that landmarks are fine but ARIA is primarily intended for dynamic
> content. There comes a point when adding more semantic markup actually
> starts to reduce the accessibility because the 'noise' gets in the way of
> the content. I would therefore reserve the use of ARIA for dynamic content,
> and even then only when it is actually needed. Some well-designed dynamic
> content does not need it.
>
> I think there is already an obvious implicit relationship between a
> heading and its container, and that aria-labelledby is really intended for
> use where relationships are not obvious or implicit.
>
> Steve
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto:
> <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Dave Merrill
> Sent: 17 April 2013 19:20
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Value and prioritization of large-scale things a web
> site can do for improved accessibility
>
> Steve, are you saying that ARIA landmarks on static content aren't useful
> in general, or just that it's not necessary to link a heading to the parent
> container whose content it describes? I assume the second, just making sure
> I'm not misinterpreting you.
>
> I hear you about dynamic content. Our customers have to prioritize
> whizbang vs accessibility to some degree, and how they do that is really
> out of our hands. In the future, it would be great if we could include a
> set of styleable and accessible widgets they could use, but for now I need
> to focus on page structure tools, as I've said. In any case, many sites
> value supposed uniqueness so highly that they'll find some shiny new toys
> to sprinkle around anyway.
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 1:59 PM, Steve Green <
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> > wrote:
>
> > Those survey results correspond with our experience of user testing
> > but I would add one more category of blocker, which is dynamic content
> > (hide/reveal, tabbed interfaces, lightboxes, carousels etc). ARIA
> > markup could help with that, but it is usually going to be specific to
> > widgets rather than being in a template.
> >
> > I don't think that your example of adding ARIA markup to static
> > content is going to help anyone.
> >
> > Steve
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto:
> > <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Dave Merrill
> > Sent: 17 April 2013 18:27
> > To: WebAIM Discussion List
> > 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
> > > > > > > > > list messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>
> > > > > > > > > list messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Dave Merrill
> > > > > > list messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>
> > > > > > list messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Dave Merrill
> > > messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>
> > > >



--
Dave Merrill