Re: Good accessibility practice for handling footnotes

Interesting. I was not aware of these aria roles until now. But it’s also worth noting that pub-aria 1.1 (still in draft) deprecates the the doc-endnotes role.

Footnotes and Endnotes come from print media; I’m not sure how suitable or usable they are in the web context.

In any case, it’s probably best to stick with native html elements (ol, li, etc.), and to include links going to and from the footnote or endnote reference. A suitable heading for the notes section also seems like a good idea.

Regarding aria-describedby, I suggest reviewing the caveats listed in

https://www.tpgi.com/describing-aria-describedby/


And test with different screen readers.

Peter

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On Jul 29, 2021, 11:38 AM -0500, Tobias Bengfort <tobias.bengfort@posteo.de>, wrote:
Hi Louise,

The Digital Publishing WAI-ARIA Module 1.0[0] adds explicit roles for
footnotes and endnotes. (You probably want to use endnotes.)

I am not sure how well this is supported in AT though.

tobias

[0]: https://www.w3.org/TR/dpub-aria-1.0/



On 29/07/2021 17.04, Louise Lister wrote:


Hello all,

I just wondered if there was an approved good practice for the use of
accessible footnotes. We have some articles on our website that carry
footnotes (currently numbered) that point to links further down the page.

Currently, a typical fragment looks a bit like this:

<p>Content in here<a href="#_ftn2" title="">[2]</a>.</p>

Then the footnote further down the page:

<div>

<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref2" title="">[2]</a> the
content source web link</p>

Would using the *aria-describedby* attribute as detailed by this writer
be the best way forward? See
https://www.sitepoint.com/accessible-footnotes-css/

<https://www.sitepoint.com/accessible-footnotes-css/>

I am guessing this scenario would affect research and education websites
like ours rather than being a more general requirement.

If anyone can advise that would be great and then I can look at making
it so (Jean-Luc Picard style).

Thank you, and sorry about all my questions!

With kind regards,

Louise



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