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

for

From: Steve Green
Date: Jul 23, 2018 9:56AM

That's my experience from user testing. I watch what keystrokes people use as well as listening to JAWS' audio output, and I don't recall any participants ever navigating by landmarks. Obviously some people do, but I have yet to encounter one.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd


-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Jonathan Avila
Sent: 23 July 2018 16:20
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Hidden headings with aria-labelledby or just aria-label best for for labelling landmark regions?

> . 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>
703.637.8957 office

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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.
>
>