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

for

From: Robert Fentress
Date: Jul 24, 2018 4:24PM

I meant to say "Thanks, Jonathan." I already thanked Steve. Haha!

On Tue, Jul 24, 2018 at 6:20 PM Robert Fentress < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Thanks, Steve! That is very helpful.
>
> Your comments point to the challenge of making an experience that is not
> only technically accessible but also maximally usable for as many people as
> possible. Though it depends on your audience and your ability to pay for
> usability testing with people with disabilities, I wonder if one strategy
> might be to code in such a way as to provide the most efficient and least
> noisy experience that is accessibility-supported, while providing initial
> guidance for users who may not be familiar with the more modern features of
> their assistive technologies. That may seem patronizing, but there is a
> bit of a chicken and egg sort of problem here. If you limit yourself to
> techniques that people are already familiar with, even if more efficient
> methods exist that are supported by the user's assistive technology, then
> it seems like you'll always be stuck with a sub-optimal experience.
> Balance in all things, of course, but technology evolves--usually for a
> reason--and we should take advantage of the affordances it provides.
>
> Best,
> Rob
>
> On Tue, Jul 24, 2018 at 11:10 AM Jonathan Avila < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> wrote:
>
>> I'll add to what Steve has said from a US perspective. I agree with all
>> of his comments regarding headings. I also have seen the same challenges
>> with training although in my experience people who have had disabilities
>> for a longer time are more aware of different products and settings then
>> when I started in this field 20 years ago. I have not witnessed the same
>> issue with table navigation that Steve did although I do see people tend to
>> use older less effective commands like the list of links feature to explore
>> a page. Unsurprisingly, people who have more recently acquired a
>> disability in my experience are more likely to not be aware of as many
>> options. It is my experience that many ophthalmologist after determining
>> they can't assist a person is who is loosing vision don't refer the person
>> to services although as Steve points out services and community groups are
>> available to people with disabilities such as those with visual impairment.
>>
>> In the US many services occur at the state level through the state
>> department of rehabilitation services or it's specific equivalent such as
>> the department for the blind and visually impaired. When I started in this
>> field 20 years ago customers would receive a week or two of training and
>> assistive technology in order to assist them with job placement. At the
>> time government programs such as the CAP program at the Department of
>> Defense offered similar services for participating agencies for Federal
>> employees. In both cases the early 2000s due to budget cuts the level of
>> training that people received dropped to a day or two and the list of
>> assistive technology that would be purchased was constrained. I'm
>> currently not involved with this aspect of service delivery but from what
>> I've heard it is similar now in the very limited scope of what people
>> receive in the form of training. Other organizations exist such as the
>> Lighthouse and similar non-profits to provide services or redu
>> ced cost services but it is a challenge to reach everyone with the right
>> training and skills people need.
>>
>> As a side note regarding my comments on the list of links used by screen
>> reader users -- I do find that the list of links is useful if you know the
>> name of the link you are looking for. It can be an effective way to reach
>> something if you know the name. However, if you don't know the name of a
>> link you can spend more time trying to read through the list of links
>> looking for something that could be found easier through navigating the
>> structure of a page. For example, if you were looking for a store locator
>> the link might be sufficiently named "find a store" or "store location" or
>> even "my local store" but those begin with different letters as such if you
>> are trying to navigate by first letter navigation in a list of links you
>> will likely have difficulty. A better way might be to search for the word
>> "store" on the page. In my experience screen readers have also not
>> updated their list of links functionality to support new ways of labeling
>> things such as via aria-describedby and
>> don't include the current list items, sentence, or table cell
>> information in the list of links. In short, usability testing with users
>> that have disabilities may reveal limitations in access to training,
>> limitations and bugs in assistive technology in addition to bugs or design
>> flaws in a website or application. So understanding and taking action on
>> user findings as Steve points out is a tricky situation. It takes an
>> expert to unpack the findings and figure out the best solution. I'm not
>> blaming users here -- so please don't suggest that -- I'm saying that the
>> challenges are complex in understanding and addressing the issues users
>> with disabilities face in accessing digital content.
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
>>