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Re: Hidden headings with aria-labelledby or just aria-label best for for labelling landmark regions?

for

From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Jul 23, 2018 9:20AM

> . I have not added visually hidden headings for the sole purpose of being the label for the landmark.

I'm assuming authors do this to support users who may navigate by heading and not landmarks -- but they also associate them to benefit people who navigate by landmarks. I'm not commenting on whether this is good or bad -- but just a guess on why authors do this. My understanding is that many users navigate by heading rather than landmark from looking at the WebAIM screen reader user survey.

Jonathan

Jonathan Avila
Chief Accessibility Officer
Level Access
<EMAIL REMOVED>
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-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of glen walker
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2018 10:59 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Hidden headings with aria-labelledby or just aria-label best for for labelling landmark regions?

Hi Steve. What in particular about using aria-label on a <nav> is bad on
farmers.gov?

I could see some overkill on their site, but it still works. They have a
<nav> inside a <nav> (for the main navigation), which isn't recommended but
is not illegal from an html spec perspective. They also use the word
"navigation" in their labels for their <nav> elements so you'll hear the
word "navigation" twice, once for the label and once because it's the type
of landmark.

I consider both of these issues a developer problem and not a problem with
using a label on a <nav>.

Ignoring <nav> at the moment, I've had headings in landmarks before and
used them as the aria-labelledby of the landmark but only because it was
natural to have a (visible) heading in the landmark. I have not added
visually hidden headings for the sole purpose of being the label for the
landmark. I don't see the purpose of that. Just use an aria-label
instead. If the heading isn't really the label for a section (and I use
the word "section" generically, not as a landmark element), then you
shouldn't have a heading. It would add confusion to the page outline.

On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 8:08 AM, Meacham, Steve - FSA, Kansas City, MO <
<EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> I've found that putting aria-label on a <nav> element can also be
> problematic. See farmers.gov for an example.
>
>