Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

matuzo.at

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 92 posts

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

#11

Post by pbalau »

jnovek wrote: post #5
Xirdus wrote: 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 disa…

> 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

Just tested, hn breaks if you zoom >110%.

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

#12

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

pbalau wrote: post #11
jnovek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disa…

> 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 Just tested, hn breaks if you zoom >110%.

How does it break for you? Seems OK to me on android — in fact, I already had it at 110%. Reminded me to check my desktop settings which have HN fixed at 125%. I cannot believe that, in 2026, the default font size is set at 12px — is anyone actually reading it at that size?!

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

#13

Post by [deleted] »

pbalau wrote: post #11
jnovek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disa…

> 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 Just tested, hn breaks if you zoom >110%.

[deleted]

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

#14

Post by jraph »

nailer wrote: 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.

> MCP

Respectfully screw making users rely on AI for accessibility. Just make the damn page accessible already. Actually, more like make sure you don't break the accessibility that's there by default with correctly written plain HTML.

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

#15

Post by uallo »

Xirdus wrote: 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).

This is caused by using CSS grid with "minmax(auto, 57rem)" and an overflowing table. It can be fixed with adding "safe" to "justify-content: safe center" that is defined on main.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/P...

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

#16

Post by cestith »

pbalau wrote: post #11
jnovek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disa…

> 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 Just tested, hn breaks if you zoom >110%.

Which platform is this on? I usually read hn on a desktop browser, and it works fine well above 110% there.

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

#19

Post by ryandrake »

uallo wrote: post #15
Xirdus wrote: 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).

This is caused by using CSS grid with "minmax(auto, 57rem)" and an overflowing table. It can be fixed with adding "safe" to "justify-content: safe center" that is defined on main. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/P...

Funny how the problem itself is created by CSS, and the solution is "more CSS." On the other hand, bare HTML tends to be extremely accessible and lacks these kinds of basic problems with panning, zooming, and scrolling.

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

#20

Post by ryandrake »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #12
pbalau wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Just tested, hn breaks if you zoom >110%.

How does it break for you? Seems OK to me on android — in fact, I already had it at 110%. Reminded me to check my desktop settings which have HN fixed at 125%. I cannot believe that, in 2026, the default font size is set at 12px — is anyone actually reading it at that size?!

> I cannot believe that, in 2026, the default font size is set at 12px — is anyone actually reading it at that size?!

The very first "quality of life" thing I do when I install a new computer / operating system nowadays is double (sometimes triple) the default font size. 12pt was probably fine when our monitors were 640x480, and when we were 18 years old.

Post reply on HN