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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: Dave Merrill
Date: Apr 17, 2013 1:21PM

Paul, is aria-labelledby a good way to say that the description for some
static content is in some other container elsewhere?

Here's what I'm thinking: Our software make a distinction between content
contributors and template designers. Contributors are subject-matter
experts and/or public-facing marketers, who quite likely don't know about
ARIA, or even much HTML. My thought was that ARIA attributes, like
container creation and choice of container element type, were in
designer-land, not content-land. From that standpoint, it would be better
if template designers could effectively say, "announce this using the
content from that paragraph over there", which a contributor would write,
rather than making the designer responsible for that labeling themselves.

Am I being clear? Would aria-labelledby provide that indirection
appropriately, for static content?


On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 3:02 PM, Paul J. Adam < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Mark up your HTML5 sections with WAI-ARIA Landmark roles and give them an
> aria-label, i.e. <nav role="navigation" aria-label="Navigation">. The
> aria-label should be announced as the accessible name for that container.
>
> Don't limit ARIA to just dynamic content, role=button is great for faux
> button elements, aria-required=true great for required fields.
>
> If you're planning for the future WAI-ARIA support will only grow and
> become more consistent just like HTML5 and CSS3.
>
> Paul J. Adam
> Accessibility Evangelist
> www.deque.com
>
> On Apr 17, 2013, at 1:54 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
> >
> >