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From: Steve Green
Date: Aug 1, 2025 11:49AM

I have been testing a website that contains some code that is nasty, but not strictly wrong as far as I can tell. Both JAWS and NVDA handle it in a way the developer would not have intended, and not only do they behave the same, but they do so with both Chrome and Firefox. I am told that Voiceover on macOS handles it differently, but I have not verified it and it's not particularly relevant. The code is very simple:

<a href="#" aria-label="foo">
<h3>bar</h3>
</a>

It's not obvious how you would expect a screen reader to announce this, but you would probably expect its announcements to include a link called "foo" and a heading called "bar". Or maybe a heading/link called "foo". Neither of these happen. JAWS and NVDA just announce a link called "foo" and nothing else. If the "aria-label" attribute is removed, they announce a heading/link called "bar", as you would expect.

The accessibility tree shows that the <a> element has an accessible name of "foo" and that the heading contents are "bar". This looks correct to me and suggests that JAWS and NVDA are interpreting it incorrectly. But before I report the issue to both vendors I would be interested in the thoughts from this forum. Are the browsers doing something wrong? Is the correct behaviour ambiguous? Is the code invalid in a way I've missed?

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd