WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: ARIA to distinguish sections with same HTML tag

for

From: Colleen Gratzer
Date: Jan 19, 2020 12:20PM


Good to know, Glen. Thank you!

Colleen


On 1/18/20 11:26 AM, glen walker wrote:
>>From a computer science perspective, using an indirect reference
> (aria-labelledby) is better than a literal reference (aria-label),
> especially for maintenance reasons.
>
> If I had a literal string that I used several times in my program, while I
> could have that string repeated every time, if I decide to change the value
> of that string, I would have to change every occurrence in the code.
>
> Instead, I would declare one variable with the value of that string then
> use that variable throughout my code. If I decide to change the value of
> that string, I change it once in the variable and don't have to touch the
> rest of the code.
>
> So my preference is to use aria-labelledby (like a variable, indirect
> reference) whenever possible, but it's only useful if the literal string is
> referred to more than once on the page. So if there's a heading or a
> paragraph or a span that contains the string and I want to use that string
> to label a landmark or add more context to a link, I will always use
> aria-labelledby. Then later, if someone decides to change the heading,
> paragraph, or span, the landmark or link that refers to it will
> automatically be updated.
>
> If the string only appears once, then I would use aria-label.
>
> So in your two examples, the first I would use aria-label because "Blog"
> doesn't appear anywhere else on the page but the second I would use
> aria-labelledby (rather than repeating "Blog Navigation" in an
> aria-label). Exactly as you have it coded.
> > > > >