WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Indicating primar and secondary action links to screenreaders

for

From: Jim Homme
Date: Sep 6, 2016 2:38PM

Hi Birkir,
We try to advocate for as little off-screen content as possible here. Our view is that any site should try to make an equivalent experience for as wide as possible audience of people with disabilities. If you create off-screen controls, for example, people with motor disabilities who have site might tab onto them and get confused when focus disappears, and the same for people with inteellectual disabilities.

Thanks.

Jim


=========Jim Homme,
Accessibility Consultant,
Bender HighTest Accessibility Team
Bender Consulting Services, Inc.,
412-787-8567,
<EMAIL REMOVED>
http://www.benderconsult.com/our%20services/hightest-accessible-technology-solutions
E+R=O

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2016 4:02 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [WebAIM] Indicating primar and secondary action links to screen readers

Hi gang

I am contemplating a curious question from my team.

They are wondering if they should use visually hidden texton links and buttons that are visually indicated as the primary and secondary actions on webpages.
Basically primary action (or call to action) links or buttons (normally one per webpage) get unique visual emphasis via CSS, ditto with secondary actions.
There is no HTML element or ARIA attribute to provide equivalent functionality programmatically (perhaps the aria-roledescription could be used for this purpose).
Bottomline:
1. Is this information important enough so that it should be provided textually or programmatically? I have never made such a call in my findings, and I have never seen it done on websites I have audited, but it is a fact that this info could be important or at least useful on some pages.
2. If it is provided, is there a technique better than good old screen reader text to do so?
I am not a fan of using heading tags to do this, I think it is not correct use of headings.

Cheers
-B

--
Work hard. Have fun. Make history.