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Visibly hidden headings to label regions and landmarks

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From: Vaibhav Saraf
Date: Sep 1, 2020 11:46AM

Hi Everyone,

I have observed that many of the developers associate the visibly hidden
headings with the page regions mostly with the use of aria-labelled-by
attribute. So they will be announced to the screen reader as, for instance,
navigation landmark (+) heading label (+) heading level. Many of the
Google's websites extensively use this approach.

I have also seen another implementation where the first element inside a
region is a visibly hidden heading. They aren'y programmatically associated
in the case. They work exactly the same with NVDA and JAWS as in the first
case. My friend told me that this approach will face badly with VoiceOver,
I have never used VO so seeking information about the same.

How well is the thought of providing the label as a heading, what I prefer
is that labelling should be done using 'aria-label' attribute and headings
probably should be available to all. However this approach looks good as
long it serves a pleasant experience to most combinations of browser and
SRs.In my understanding WCAG has no direct emphasis around the topic I want
to discuss or probably I am not able to understand it. I seek your opinion
about the scenario.

Thanks,
Vaibhav