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Re: Visibly hidden headings to label regions and landmarks

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From: David Engebretson Jr.
Date: Sep 1, 2020 6:38PM


I think using region naming and a visibly hidden heading directly after the region naming as a great way to make sure that folks who navigate by headings, and folks who navigate by regions, will get equal structural information as to the regions that make up the web page.

It might be "noisy" to a screen reader user who is navigating by arrow keys but I don't think, and the screen reader survey seems to agree statistically, that all screen reader users navigate pages in the same way. Personally I know that regions should give me a quick glimpse of the visual sections of the page and headings should give me context to the textual content of the page, but I don't think most of us screen reader users are as savvy as those of us in the web accessibility field.

The more opportunity for equal access the better, in my opinion.

Best,
David

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Murphy, Sean
Sent: Tuesday, September 01, 2020 4:30 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Visibly hidden headings to label regions and landmarks

From a screen reader point of view. I see this as screen noise. If I have a region with the exact name as the heading, which is the next line. Then there is no added value due to both elements are page section components. This is over usage of aria when it is not required.


If it actually fails a SC. This time of morning, I cannot recall our internal discussions on this point. As we have had them. My guidance is to use one or the other. As you don't need to have headings on a page if they are visually design that way. If you have headings visually designed, then you don't need the region section.

Sean

Regards
Sean Murphy



Sean Murphy | Senior Digital System specialist (Accessibility) Telstra Digital Channels | Digital Systems
Mobile: 0405 129 739 | Desk: (02) 9866-7917 Digital Systems Launch Page Accessibility Single source of Truth

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Vaibhav Saraf
Sent: Wednesday, 2 September 2020 3:47 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [WebAIM] Visibly hidden headings to label regions and landmarks

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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