RE: Appropriate use of aria labels

That approach will not work because you cannot use “aria-label” attributes on links. We recommend using hidden text instead. There are a number of ways of implementing hidden text, but most people use the CSS “clip” technique because it works with LTR and RTL languages. Floating the text and giving it a large negative left margin works fine for LTR languages, but cannot be used with RTL languages.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd


From: Louise Lister <Louise.Lister@iop.org>
Sent: 08 April 2021 11:28
To: w3c-wai-ig <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: Appropriate use of aria labels


Hi all,

Sorry I have another one!  I’ll try and mute down a bit after this one as I already have a lot to mull over!

We have some links on our site that are repeated (like everyone else). In the two examples below, is the gold standard to have an aria label in the way described:


  1.  You have a category news page which aggregates text snippets next to a stack of ‘read more’ CTAs for different news pages sitting beneath it.  Here’s instead of someone tabbing through and hearing ‘read more, read more …’ for all the links, when you tabbed through you’d have an aria label that read out ‘read more about 'headline of news article x', so you’d have something more descriptive for a screen reader?
  2.  You have side panel and header/footer items with repeated links such as privacy policy, or awards, or about. Here if the 1 to 2 word item is not obvious you would use a longer aria label to describe it. For example, ‘read more about the history of organisation x’.

It’s a bit easier with editorial content (in the body copy) because you can make the hyperlinks specific and descriptive.

With kind regards
Louise


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