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Re: what to do when <section> flags as accessibility error

for

From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Dec 4, 2016 2:58PM

> I think that as accessibility experts we often get a little too caught up in our role as standards auditors. Concentrating on the issues that pose real world problems for users is much more important. If yours is a very large site "fixing" what in my opinion is an inconsequential error could cost hundreds of man hours and really make it difficult for you to push for the more important changes on the site.

I totally agree that we must prioritize issues. As for causing hundreds of hours -- I'm not sure -- I'd imagine that a piece of JavaScript could be written that would use aria-labelledby to associate the heading with its containing section. Generally I am of the mindset that only landmarks that could be confusing without an accessible name would be a violation. For example
* A page where there are two navigation regions
* A page where one section ends and other begins but there is no heading and adding an accessible name would cause the region to show up to screen readers thus communicating a visual section of the page.

That is the fact that adding an accessible name causes the region to appear to screen readers may be necessary in specific situations where this information is communicated visually such as change in background color. Dialogs can also be created with regions and I'd argue when you have a dialog it should always have an accessible name.

Jonathan

Jonathan Avila
Chief Accessibility Officer
SSB BART Group 
<EMAIL REMOVED>
703.637.8957 (Office)

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