RE: Role for sponsored content

My initial view is that, if content is displayed to sighted users as “sponsored” or similar, then that also needs to be conveyed accessibly. So if it is text then the screenreader speaks the text; if an icon then it needs an accessible name. Visually the icon should be widely understood or else an icon with a text label is required, at the very least it should have a pop up.

That’s basically Level a wcag AND WE DON’T NEED TO DO MORE FOR AN EQUAL EXPERIENCE.

Kevin

From: Andrea Moretti <axyzxp@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, 27 October 2022 12:01 am
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Role for sponsored content

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization.

Many countries require sponsored content to be easily identifiable by the user. In many websites this is achieved with some flags near or inside the sponsored content. I am wondering how this should be correctly handled from an accessibility perspective..

I tried to look for some information on the topic, but haven't found much. Is there any proposal to have a specific role for sponsored content? Are there other suggestions to make it obvious to the user? An aria-label could be used with a "sponsored" as first word, but this seems prone to interpretations and may differ wildly in different languages or use cases.

In a way a role could also help assistive technologies to skip this content if the user wants, and eventually lead also to better adblocking solutions. On the other hand it may be too specific as a role and it could be hard to handle nuances like "sponsored" vs "external advertising" vs "internal advertising", etc.

What are your thoughts? Is there any active discussion around these topics I can read?

Thanks,
- Andrea


Kevin Prince

Product Accessibility & Usability Consultant



E kevin.prince@fostermoore.com

Christchurch

fostermoore.com

This email and its contents are confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you should contact the sender immediately, you must not use, copy or disclose any of the information in the email, and you must delete it from your system immediately.