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Re: The importance of landmarks to screen readers?

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From: Andrews, David B (DEED)
Date: Mar 24, 2021 7:39AM

This site did have a log of regions!

I don't know what it is like visually, but when you arrow through, using JAWS, versus tabbing through, they are quite different experiences.

Dave




-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Bart Simons
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2021 6:19 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] The importance of landmarks to screen readers?

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> you should also specify an aria-label for the landmark.

I would like to add some nuances to this statement.
Taking the website https://gcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.keat.gr%2Findex.php%2Fen%2F&amp;data%7C01%7Cdavid.b.andrews%40state.mn.us%7C33e0daa1b1174505aade08d8eeb66c92%7Ceb14b04624c445198f26b89c2159828c%7C0%7C1%7C637521814580151771%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&amp;sdata=Q1OthYzP8Ne8T9b%2B0hrVieqzooUc%2BOx1PVMoJnNeh1k%3D&amp;reserved=0 as an example.

When using a role="search" there is really no need to label that section with the word search that you labelledby from a visually hidden heading:
<section role="search" aria-labelledby="zf--search--section-heading">
<h2 id="zf--search--section-heading" class="zf--section-heading visually-hidden">Search</h2>

We also don't need a section labelled "footer" inside the <footer> element:
<footer role="contentinfo">
<section aria-labelledby="zf--footer-content--section-heading"
<h2 id="zf--footer-content--section-heading"
class="visually-hidden">Footer</h2>

Further I'd limit the number of occurences of the same landmark on a page rather than trying to find descriptive labels. They clearly ran out of inspiration when they came up with "complementary content (lower)"

It is not trivial to label a set of nav sections in a useful way. My plea is to limit the number of landmarks avoiding the necessity to label them.

Regards

Bart Simons


Op 23/03/2021 om 21:32 schreef glen walker:

> You often find scanning tools that flag a lack of landmarks as an error.
> Or more frequently, they're marked as a "best practice" but many
> people miss the "best practice" part and think *all* errors found by
> the tool are required to be fixed.
>
> Nothing in WCAG requires landmarks directly. They can absolutely be
> helpful for navigating the page (with assistive technology) and aiding
> in
> 2.4.1 conformance. They can also be helpful in satisfying 1.3.1 since
> you can often visually discern a "relationship" among elements that
> should be programmatically conveyed. But it can be a bit subjective
> on whether landmarks are really "required".
>
> But does it matter if they are technically needed or not? From a UX
> perspective, they're super handy so go ahead and implement them. If
> browsers would implement a native way to navigate by landmarks then
> more users could benefit from them, especially keyboard users.
>
> And if you are going to implement them, lean towards using native
> semantic html elements first before relying on ARIA roles. Use
> <header>, <footer>, <main>, <nav>, <section>, <aside>, etc. And other
> than <header>, <footer>, or <main>, you should also specify an aria-label for the landmark.
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