Accessibility Guide for moderate
A best practice is to guarantee that there is only one primary landmark for navigating to the page’s principal content, and if the page has iframe
components, each should contain either no landmarks or a single landmark.
If a website’s material is divided into one or more high-level parts, screen reader users will find it much easier to navigate. It is difficult to locate content outside of these categories, and its purpose may be obscure.
Historically, HTML lacked essential semantic markers, such as the ability to define page sections as the header, navigation, primary content, and footer. Using both HTML5 elements and ARIA landmarks in the same element is a best practice, but as browser support grows, the future will favor HTML areas.
What this Accessibility Rule Checks
Ensures that all page content falls within a landmark region.
Landmarks must have an unique role or role/label/title (i.e. accessible name) combination.
landmark-unique
is a new best practice rule ensuring that landmarks have an unique role or accessible name (i.e. role, label, title) combination.
What this Accessibility Rule Checks
Ensures landmarks are unique.
Ensures that video
or audio
elements don’t have autoplay audio that lasts more than three seconds without a way to silence it.
When using screen reading software, people who are blind or have low vision may have trouble hearing the screen reader’s spoken output if other audio is playing at the same time.
If automatically playing audio continues for more than three seconds, it must be possible to pause, stop, or adjust the level using a well placed, easily accessible mechanism.
Users of screen readers can hear the screen reader without any other sounds playing thanks to an audio control.
A screen reader user’s ability to find the stop button may be hampered if audio starts playing immediately when they land on a page. This is because they navigate by listening, and automatically starting sounds may obstruct that navigation.
Therefore, we oppose the practice of automatically starting sounds (especially if they run longer than three seconds) and encourage users to start the sound themselves once they arrive at the page rather than expecting them to stop the sound themselves once they have reached the page.
What this Accessibility Rule Checks
The algorithm for this rule returns:
-
Undefined when
<audio>
has no source (duration cannot be interpreted). -
Undefined when
<video>
has no source (duration cannot be interpreted). -
False when
<audio>
can autoplay and has no controls mechanism. -
False when
<video>
can autoplay and has no controls mechanism -
False when
<audio>
plays less than three seconds but loops. -
True when
<video>
can autoplay and duration is less than three seconds (by passing options). -
True when
<video>
can autoplay and duration is below allowed duration (by setting playback range). -
True when
<audio>
can autoplay but has controls mechanism. -
True when
<video>
can autoplay and has controls mechanism.
To enable screen reader users to navigate the heading structure with keyboard shortcuts rather than wasting time listening to more of the website to understand its structure, make sure the page, or at least one of its frames, contains a h1
element that appears before the start of the main content.
Users of screen readers can utilize keyboard keys to move straight to the first h1
, which should, in theory, let them access the web page’s main content. Screen reader users must listen to more of the website in order to understand its structure if there is no h1
or if it appears elsewhere other than at the start of the main material, wasting significant time.
Keep in mind that unlike a visual user, a blind user cannot just glance at a web page and comprehend its layout. Without reading the entire material, visual users can learn a lot about the website layout. Users who are blind do not have such option. Unless there is another convenient way to gain a “glimpse,” screen readers read sequentially, which requires listening to the entire web page. It turns out that one method to do that is to use headers. Keyboard shortcuts can be used by screen reader users to move around a document’s heading hierarchy.
What this Accessibility Rule Checks
This rule locates every element that matches the subsequent selector and confirms that there is at least one of them: h1:not([role])
, [role="heading"][aria-level="1"]
The recommended practice is to keep all content, excluding skip links, in designated areas such the header
, nav
, main
, and footer
.
If the content is divided into several high-level divisions, screen reader users can navigate a website much more easily. Finding content that isn’t in parts can be challenging, and the item’s intent sometimes isn’t evident.
Some essential semantic markers, such as the ability to designate portions of the page as the header, navigation, primary content, and footer, were formerly absent from HTML. It is recommended to combine HTML5 elements with ARIA landmarks in a single element, but as browser support for HTML5 grows, using native HTML5 element regions will become more common.
What Checks This Accessibility Rule?
Ensures that a landmark region contains all of the content on a page.
For screen reader users to efficiently navigate tables, the scope
element must be utilized correctly on tables in accordance with either HTML4 or HTML5 specifications.
If utilized properly, the scope
feature greatly simplifies table navigation for screen reader users. When misused, scope
can make table navigation far more difficult and ineffective.
The assumption made by a screen reader is that a table has a header that identifies a scope. Having an accurate header makes viewing a table for those who use screen readers far more accessible and effective due to the way the devices work.
What this Accessibility Rule Checks
Ensures that tables are correctly using the scope
attribute.
In order to save viewers time, the website must contain a link at the top before the navigation that directs them directly to the page’s core content.
As it appears in the HTML file, screen readers read the text sequentially.
This has the effect of reading out to users of assistive technology the content at the top of the page, which normally includes the full navigation, before they can access any of the primary content. When a user is primarily interested in the main material, it might be time-consuming to listen to or navigate through all of the text at the top of the page because it is frequently very long.
Users who are blind, have low eyesight, or only use the mouse will benefit from an HTML website having a skip link.
What this Accessibility Rule Checks
Ensures that programmers adhere to the best practice of placing a skip link as the page’s very first link.