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Don't put aria-label on generic elements like divs

matuzo.at

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Re: Don't put aria-label on generic elements like divs

#5
post #4

Speaking of WebAccessibilityFails, the article overflows to the left without a scrollbar when viewed on a phone narrower than an iPhone, making the first word of every line unreadable (and there are a lot of lines on a phone narrower than an iPhone).

I keep my browser zoomed in substantially to compensate for uncorrectable vision issues. I’d say perhaps once per day I’ll encounter a website that has never had zoom in/out (ctl +/-) tested because if you zoom up even one level from 100%, everything breaks.

There are several equally useless failure modes I’ve seen with this, a few off the top of my head:

  - rendering fails, everything falls apart

  - some elements disappear

  - it drops into the feature-limited mobile view

  - the author or framework overrides zoom with some other behavior — this one makes me especially crazy because they had to do *extra work* to screw up accessibility
Certain websites are impossible for me to use and I just avoid them.

Re: Don't put aria-label on generic elements like divs

#6
While web accessibility is important and something we should be investing in, I do feel that the vendors of accessibility tools are somewhat to blame here in how friggin difficult it is to actually make something accessible. Quirks and features are wildly inconsistent across tools, and feature uptake is much slower than it should be. For example, creating an accessible dialog shouldn’t be a multi-page essay to explain, it should just be “use the element.” - but the a11y tools are so inconsistent that you can’t just do the standards compliant thing. And don’t get me started on roving tabindex techniques (for things like data tables), which are at best an ugly hack that the entire industry has collectively decided “eh, it’s good enough”.

Even what's described in the article basically boils down to "You can label things, but not generic things (for some reason?), unless that generic thing is a or has a popover attr in which case it magically works." And this isn't even one of the "hard" accessibility things!

Re: Don't put aria-label on generic elements like divs

#7
Avoid aria tags. The spec is unworkable (see this document) the browsers made by the disability industry extract vast quantities of money from disabled people with little effectiveness because they try and boil the ocean which unsurprisingly is ineffective.

Support efforts for computer vision based browsers, MCP and APIs.

Re: Don't put aria-label on generic elements like divs

#8
post #7

Avoid aria tags. The spec is unworkable (see this document) the browsers made by the disability industry extract vast quantities of money from disabled people with little effectiveness because they try and boil the ocean which unsurprisingly is ineffective. Support efforts for computer vision based browsers, MCP and APIs.

What document?

Do you have any sources to back these claims up?

Re: Don't put aria-label on generic elements like divs

#9
No one has done more damage to web accessibility than the web accessibility industry. Arcane rules like this make any sane developer throw up their hands in disgust.

I think the accessibility consultants like this state of affairs: they can threaten more lawsuits and extract more in consulting fees.

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