WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Seeking public feedback for W3C ARIA role=formlandmark mapping

for

From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Apr 22, 2016 8:23AM

I agree.

I think there would be value to the user experience to treat a form like a landmark when it has an accessible name, but no value if the form has no accessible name.

I think there might be a couple of cases where treating any form as a landmark might either make the UI a bit more cumbersome to use or where the landmark adds no value.

First, there is the situation where a section with a landmark role may only contain a form. For example, it is not uncommon to see a site search that uses a form. If the site search is also contained inside a search landmark, it ends up being a bit pointless.

We also have situations where a page might contain multiple forms. Again, knowing that this part of the page contains some kind of form content probably helps the user very little.

However, if the user knows that this is the newsletter subscription form, the landmark becomes a whole lot more useful.

Honestly, I could see a lot of value in identifying a form as a landmark when it has an accessible name. It definitely could help on pages where there are multiple "forms" or on pages where we want to provide a more efficient way to navigate to an important form.

Thanks,
Tim