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Is it ok to intentionally break WCAG 2.5.3?

for

From: glen walker
Date: Aug 20, 2022 10:55AM

Seems like a silly question to ask if it's ok to intentionally break any
WCAG.

I have a button that brings up a dialog with some accessibility features
(change the color theme, line spacing, font size, etc). Even though the
dialog has more options than the font size, the client chose to display the
button that opens it with an "AA", where the first capital A is small and
the second is bigger, which is a common way to show font sizes. It's
similar to the "change case" button in Microsoft Word but they use a
captial A and a small a. Microsoft decided to set the button name to
"change case".

Anyway, WCAG 2.5.3 says that the visible label must exist in the accessible
name. The logical name for the button is "accessibility options" (or
something like that) but the button displays "AA". I was going to
recommend the sensible name and not recommend that they put "AA" in the
name, but this intentionally breaks 2.5.3. For conformance purposes, they
could have "accessibility options (AA)" but that just sounds weird with a
screen reader and doesn't make the UX any better, at least for the screen
reader user.

Now a speech interface user, such as Dragon, won't know the button is
called "accessibility options" so if they say "Click AA", nothing will
happen. In general, I always encourage conformance with 2.5.3 but this one
is tricky. The Dragon user can say "click button" and see all the buttons
numbered and easily select it, and at some point they can find out the
accessible name and use it with the "click" command.

Have you ever recommended an accessible name that does not match the
visible label?