WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: The importance of landmarks to screen readers?

for

From: Mark Magennis
Date: Mar 25, 2021 6:21AM

The survey results are very interesting and perhaps surprising. However, one thing to note is that the question asks whether people navigate by landmarks. Even if they don't, landmarks may still be useful to them by providing information about the structure as they go through it using other navigation methods.

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Maraikayar Prem Nawaz
Sent: 25 March 2021 06:23
Cc: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [WebAIM] The importance of landmarks to screen readers?

The frequent use of landmarks and regions has continually decreased from 43.8% in 2014, to 38.6% in 2015, to 30.5% in 2017, to 26.6% on this survey.
It's difficult to know the reasons for this. It could be due to infrequent or improper usage of landmarks/regions in pages. Or perhaps because other mechanisms are continually better.
https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey8/#landmarks
Browsing by headings has a huge acceptance than landmarks.


On Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 7:09 PM Andrews, David B (DEED) < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> 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?
>
> This message may be from an external email source.
> Do not select links or open attachments unless verified. Report all
> suspicious emails to Minnesota IT Services Security Operations Center.
>
> >
> > 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.k
> eat.gr%2Findex.php%2Fen%2F&amp;data%7C01%7Cdavid.b.andrews%40state.
> mn.us%7C33e0daa1b1174505aade08d8eeb66c92%7Ceb14b04624c445198f26b89c215
> 9828c%7C0%7C1%7C637521814580151771%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4
> wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&amp;sda
> ta=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.
> > > > > > https://gcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flist.
> > webaim.org%2F&amp;data%7C01%7Cdavid.b.andrews%40state.mn.us%7C33e
> > 0d
> > aa1b1174505aade08d8eeb66c92%7Ceb14b04624c445198f26b89c2159828c%7C0%7
> > C1
> > %7C637521814580151771%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLC
> > JQ
> > IjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&amp;sdata=6Jlyeul6
> > %2
> > FTzHO5NXsHk6%2FrWZjxdR9HdBada5cvypTik%3D&amp;reserved=0
> > List archives at
> > https://gcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fweb
> > ai
> > m.org%2Fdiscussion%2Farchives&amp;data%7C01%7Cdavid.b.andrews%40s
> > ta
> > te.mn.us%7C33e0daa1b1174505aade08d8eeb66c92%7Ceb14b04624c445198f26b8
> > 9c
> > 2159828c%7C0%7C1%7C637521814580161727%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIj
> > oi
> > MC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&am
> > p;
> > sdata=bpfHCxyz4S9ktHRZxmcXzWFEoQ6OcUTbK2JoSW6I3yU%3D&amp;reserved=0
> > >
>
> > > https://gcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flist.
> webaim.org%2F&amp;data%7C01%7Cdavid.b.andrews%40state.mn.us%7C33e0d
> aa1b1174505aade08d8eeb66c92%7Ceb14b04624c445198f26b89c2159828c%7C0%7C1
> %7C637521814580161727%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQ
> IjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&amp;sdata=u5fjKBc3Kk
> Qhb3GNO9rnf4RfT%2BVdzC5%2FZUKPDdIvZTs%3D&amp;reserved=0
> List archives at
> https://gcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwebai
> m.org%2Fdiscussion%2Farchives&amp;data%7C01%7Cdavid.b.andrews%40sta
> te.mn.us%7C33e0daa1b1174505aade08d8eeb66c92%7Ceb14b04624c445198f26b89c
> 2159828c%7C0%7C1%7C637521814580161727%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoi
> MC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&amp;
> sdata=bpfHCxyz4S9ktHRZxmcXzWFEoQ6OcUTbK2JoSW6I3yU%3D&amp;reserved=0
> > > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> >