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Re: The importance of landmarks to screen readers?

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From: Peter Weil
Date: Mar 29, 2021 9:16AM

Gunnar,

Thanks for that explanation.

It sounds as though there might be a disconnect between a) the ARIA spec; b) how some/many users navigate sites in practice; and c) skip link implementations that skip not only navigation links, but complementary content as well.

Perhaps the latter could be mitigated by a skip link implementation that includes the complementary content as an option. A & b pose a real difficulty for developers who want or must follow the ARIA spec, but may risk failing to communicate with users who navigate sites in ways that the spec does not account for or possibly undermines (for lack of a better term).



On 3/29/21, 9:24 AM, "WebAIM-Forum" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:


Peter

Many users, mysefl included, only review the header of a website once,
then use the main content landmark, the h1 heading at the start of the
main content (if site is well implemented) or use the skip link to
jump straight to the main content of a page and explore from there.
If you place a complementary content prior to the main content, e.g.
an alert or special announcement, a user who does not see the page and
uses a methodology that involves jumping to the main content, will not
notice it.
If you, however, place this content right after the h1 heading inside
the main content, users who use this methodology will spot it.
Since, in my line of business, we use complementary content primarily
for special announcements or alerts (like closures or similar) we
don't want users to miss them.
Yes, there are other ways to announce alerts, we use some of them,
including the alert role, live regions and overlays, but all of them
have drawbacks.



On 3/29/21, Peter Weil < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Yes, the ARIA spec is quite clear about this. And while it does mention that
> nesting is permissible, examples are few and the implication (as I read it)
> is that these are probably limited to cases where there are multiple
> elements with such roles as application, document, and perhaps article(?). I
> think these kinds of cases are relatively rare, at least in my experience.
>
> As a developer. I work with all kinds of layout designs that do not take
> landmarks into account and unwittingly imply nested landmarks (that's
> another discussion), and it can be a challenge to adapt them to a
> landmarked-based structure. This is the main reason I asked my question.
>
> Regarding discoverability, I'd like to hear more about how or why content
> within, say, an aside, might be less discoverable if it were at the top
> level as opposed to be nested. In many cases, visual order or organization
> is flexible enough via CSS to achieve to decent balance between page
> structure and visual presentation. Regardless, if faced with a situation
> where visual design interfered with page structure (i.e., correct landmark
> usage), I might request more presentation flexibility for accessibility
> reasons.
>
> Peter
>
> --
> Peter Weil
> Web Developer
> University Marketing
> University of Wisconsin–Madison
>
>
>
> On 3/28/21, 9:21 PM, "WebAIM-Forum" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> wrote:
>
>
> According to the specification, nesting a complementary landmark inside the
> main landmark is an ARIA violation because complementary landmarks should be
> top level landmarks (i.e. not contained within any other landmarks).
>
> https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/#complementary
>
> https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices/examples/landmarks/complementary.html
>
> Steve Green
> Managing Director
> Test Partners Ltd
>
>
>