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Re: The importance of landmarks to screen readers?

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From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Mar 28, 2021 9:13AM

I agree. I do not see how nesting a complementary landmark inside the
main landmark is an ARIA violation.

The argument goes that the complementary landmark contains content
that is independent of the rest of the page. Therefore that content
clearly doesn't belong in the main content of the page, which is the
content unique to the page.
It does make sense to a certain extent but it has to be balanced
against context and discoverability.
Say you have a hotel website that displays a widget with up-to-date
weather information for the hotel location.
I would put that in a complementary landmark (if I were to use any landmark).
So from the nesting perspcetive that landmark shoud be put ouside the
main landmark but if you put it above the main landmark it might not
be easily dicoverable.
If you put it below the main landmark (between main and footer) it
probably would work but might not correspond to the visual order of
the page.
In a nice tropical setting you probably want to put the weather info
in a prime location, adjacent to the reservation area.
You'd want that info to be just as prominent to someone who doesn't
see the page or someone uses an alternative content order.
So if you can't ntest complementary inside main you have to choose
between not using a landmark for this info or manipulating the content
order to push it outside the main content, also making it less
discoverable or relevant if you don't see the page.
Ultimately, a landmark is supposed to aid accessibility. I think this
rule actually can do the opposite, which either makes the
complementary landmark not a good landmark or it needs to be revised.
Cheers
-B

On 3/28/21, Bart Simons < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Hello,
>
> For me there is no problem to nest landmarks. It is common to see a
> <nav> inside the <header>. It could happen that a <nav> is part of the
> <main>. E.g. a section with liks to related articles, pagination links ...
>
> <h1> outside of <main> is a failure for me, since <h1> is undoubtedly
> part of the main content of a web page.
>
> An interesting debate is whether breadcrumbs should be part of <main>?
>
> Regards
> Bart
>
> Op 25/03/2021 om 14:55 schreef Peter Weil:
>> One thing I wonder about landmarks is nesting. It's not uncommon to see a
>> <nav> element tucked inside <main>. Is this really a good idea? My
>> impression is that landmarks ought to kept at the top level unless there
>> is a compelling reason (which does not include css or layout constraints)
>> to do so.
>>
>> It's also common is to see the heading (e.g., <h1>) for <main> to be
>> located outside of <main>. How important is it to keep these together
>> under the same landmark?
>>
>> --
>> Peter Weil
>> Web Developer
>> University Marketing
>> University of Wisconsin–Madison
>>
>>
>> On 3/23/21, 3:08 PM, "WebAIM-Forum" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> My dev team and I are currently having a discussion about the importance
>> of
>> landmarks in websites. I was under the impression that the guidance of
>> WCAG
>> suggests that each webpage should have at least one or two landmarks per
>> page, to help give screenreader users the ability to understand the
>> overall
>> layout of the page, for example that the page has at least the landmarks:
>>
>> - a header (for overall site info such as website name)
>> - a nav (with links to different pages within the site or different
>> sections of the page if it's a page with a lot of different content such
>> as
>> a long scroll type website)
>> - a main for the content of the page
>>
>> We were working on a website that had a nav landmark that was by default
>> hidden as a landmark when the page loaded (in NVDA it was not showing as
>> anything under the Landmarks list in Elements List) and only became
>> visible
>> as a landmark once a hamburger menu was opened.
>>
>> I had flagged this as a WCAG failure, because the user has no way to know
>> the nav landmark is there until they open the nav by hamburger button (and
>> how can they open the nav when they don't know it's there? a sort of
>> catch-22 situation) and I had assumed that screenreader users would want
>> the nav landmark to be visible by default, either accessible by keyboard
>> shortcut or by the Landmarks list.
>>
>> Have I given the nav landmark identity too much importance, that it must
>> be
>> identified by the screenreader officially as a nav landmark by default
>> when
>> the page loads? If the nav was clearly labelled for what it is (ie Main
>> menu) and clear instructions are given for opening the menu by the
>> hamburger icon, and otherwise is read out clearly by the screenreader and
>> navigable by keyboard, would that be considered sufficient for passing the
>> intent of WCAG's guidelines? Or do screen reader users first look at the
>> list of page landmarks to help them move quickly between different parts
>> of
>> the page?
>>
>>
>> *x*
>> *Christine Hogenkamp (She, Her)*
>> Front-end Developer
>>
>> CONTEXT CREATIVE
>> 317 ADELAIDE ST. W., #500 | TORONTO, ON CANADA | M5V 1P9
>> <https://maps.google.com/?q17+ADELAIDE+ST.+W.,+%23500%C2%A0+%7C%C2%A0+TORONTO,+ON+CANADA%C2%A0+%7C%C2%A0+M5V+1P9&entry=gmail&source=g>
>> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >
>
> > > > >


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