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Re: expectations role=group / role=region

for

From: Bryan Garaventa
Date: Apr 4, 2022 1:07PM

That's true.

The biggest problem, as I see it, is that the majority of screen reader users will never do this because they assume that the greatest level of accessibility is enabled by default, which in this case it is not.

In the case of named regions, there are many things you can use these for that go beyond what the ARIA spec documents, all of which add rich accessibility support for these widget types. That is, if users are ever aware of these because most will not be now.

Besides accordions, here are several others which you can test with named regions enabled to see what I mean.

Carousels: https://whatsock.com/Templates/Carousels/AutoRotate/index.htm
Popups: https://whatsock.com/Templates/Popups/Internal/index.htm
Tooltips: https://whatsock.com/Templates/Tooltips/Internal/index.htm

All of these widget types benefit from detailed region boundary information, which are explicitly provided as named regions. Otherwise there is no way to identify where the widget or dynamic content regions begin and end.

It is no wonder why landmark regions are declining in the WebAim survey if standard users are never even made aware that these sections even exist during standard navigation.

Bryan Garaventa
Principal Accessibility Architect
Level Access, Inc.
<EMAIL REMOVED>
415.624.2709 (o)
www.LevelAccess.com