Seeking broad review of new accessible name and description section of ARIA Authoring Practices

Hello ARIA and WAI colleagues,

 

The ARIA authoring practices task force is excited to share a draft of a significant new section of the ARIA Authoring Practices Guide that covers accessible names and descriptions. Given the scope and complexity of the material, before we submit our call for consensus to publish release 4 of the APG Note in approximately 2 weeks, we are seeking broad review of this section. I have included a description of the content after my signature below.

 

We would prefer to receive feedback in aria-practices issue 1050 (link below), but if for some reason that is not convenient, feel free to reply to this thread.

 

Link to APG section 5 “Providing Accessible Names and Descriptions”:

http://w3c.github.io/aria-practices/#names_and_descriptions

 

Link to feedback issue 1050:

https://github.com/w3c/aria-practices/issues/1050

 

Best,

Matt King

Overview:

 

Providing elements with accessible names, and where appropriate, accessible descriptions is one of the most fundamental and important responsibilities authors have when developing accessible web experiences. While doing so is straightforward for most elements, technical mistakes that can have devastating impacts on users of assistive technologies are easy to make and unfortunately common. To help authors provide effective and reliable accessible names and descriptions, this section explains their purpose, when authors need to provide them, how browsers assemble them, and rules for coding and composing them.

 

It also provides guidance for effectively employing the following naming and describing techniques and WAI-ARIA properties:

 

* Naming:

* Naming with child content.
* Naming with a string attribute via aria-label .
* Naming by referencing content with aria-labelledby .
* Naming form controls with the label element.
* Naming fieldsets with the legend element.
* Naming tables and figures with captions.
* Fallback names derived from titles and placeholders.

* Describing:

* Describing by referencing content with aria-describedby .
* Describing by referencing content with aria-details .
* Describing tables and figures with captions.
* Descriptions derived from titles.

 

Read the complete section at:

http://w3c.github.io/aria-practices/#names_and_descriptions