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Re: Landmarks

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From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: May 2, 2019 8:49AM

Axe flags a page where some content is contained in landmarks and
other content isn't as a best practice issue, which I think is
reasonable.
I haven't tested situations where you have multiple banner, main or
contentinfo regions per page, it should be the same (slight misuse of
ARIA) though I know the ARIA group has had debates about whether this
is true, a page could contain an embedded document with its own
landmark structure, or be sectioned in such a way as justifying two
main landmarks.
I personally disagree.
I think all pages should have banner, main and contentinfo (except
pages with no headers or footers whatsoever, those are rare but do
exist).
I insist on that in my reviews, I also flag multiple
banner/main/contentinfo landmarks as a fail.
Between these 3 you should have the whole pae covered.
There are the occasional borderline cases, such as breadcrumbs, which
I recommend role="navigation" on, these are sometimes displayed
between header and main, or main and footer.
Sometimes you have totally irrelevant contnt on the page, in which
case I recommend the complementary role, things like standard ad
banners for sections of pages, weather information for a hotel page
and similar.

I think landmarks are worth fighting for, at least the minimal use of
basic landmarks. AS steve elegantly pointed out, they convey more
information than headings alone and they are also standard across
pages whereas heading structure and text depends on the page content
and is less consistent.



On 5/2/19, Isabel Holdsworth < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> I kind of feel like either use them correctly or not at all. Does this
> seem a reasonable enough approach?
>
> Steve, you make a very good point about landmarks denoting the end as
> well as the start, which mechanisms such as H1 headings and skip links
> can't do.
>
> Cheers, Isabel
>
> On 02/05/2019, Steve Green < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> The absence of landmarks is certainly not the most serious of
>> accessibility
>> barriers, but landmarks have the advantage that they convey both the
>> start
>> and end of sections of content, which headings do not.
>>
>> Page headers and footers are usually conveyed visually in a totally
>> unambiguous manner. SC 1.3.1 requires that this structure is conveyed
>> programmatically, and landmarks are the best way to do that. In fact, how
>> else would you do so? I struggle to see how this cannot be a
>> non-compliance.
>>
>> Steve
>>
>>
>>