In striving for WCAG 2.0 Compliance, I'm finding quite a bit of varied information regarding proper treatment of buttons, specifically what is required to consider the button accessible and compliant.
What is the appropriate way to mark-up a <button>? What attributes or combination do they need to have?
My buttons fall into three categories:
Buttons that have text that describes their intended action. (e.g. "Learn More" to launch a modal with more product information)
Buttons that have text that does not describe their action. (e.g. "X" or text that titles a section of accordion content)
Buttons that do not have text that describes their intended action or otherwise. (e.g. An icon / image that switches the context of a carousel)
For instance, in the following simple example of 3 above: http://codepen.io/ga-joe/pen/ggeLeW
Is it acceptable to add only an aria-label attribute for a button with no text? Are name and / or value always required? Please send help! Thank you!
These seem to be the relevant WCAG Guidelines:
https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#text-equiv-all
https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#navigation-mechanisms-refs
https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#ensure-compat-rsv
These kinds of questions always depend on context. Let me give it a shot sans context.
<button>Learn More</button> does the trick as long as contextually someone will understand what they will learn more about. Usually the button is preceded by some descriptive text. However, if it just brings someone to another page as opposed to firing a modal, I would use a link.
<button aria-label="Close">×</button> for a close button (I am using the character entity for ×, which is more symmetrical than x. Again, if the button is at the top of a modal (for example), perhaps adjacent to its heading, then that is probably adequate.
<button aria-label="Image 1">[icon]</button> can work for a carousel. Note that a font icon can be lost if the typeface does not download. A background image will disappear in Windows High Contrast Mode (WHCM) for IE11 and older versions of Edge. The aria-label will not help the WHCM users. Probably best to use an image (even an SVG) and its alt attribute instead, which means then you do not need aria-label.
You do not need a name attribute. It does nothing useful here.
Do not use a role="button" attribute. That role is automagically part of the <button> element. If you assign another role, then you have a big problem.
Definitely do not use a title attribute. That does more harm than good.
Buttons that have text that describes their intended action. (e.g. "Learn More" to launch a modal with more product information)
You can read the recommendations for WCAG 2.4.9 Link Purpose (Link Only) even if we're not talking about links. The text "Learn more" can be understood when in context, but for low vision users who require screen magnifier, for instance, it can be difficult to understand the action from the button text itself.
For instance the text Learn more about "Wheels on the bus" may seem more appropriate.
Buttons that have text that does not describe their action. (e.g. "X" or text that titles a section of accordion content)
I answered that subject in another post:
What is aria-label and how should I use it?
You have to use both aria-label (useful for screenreaders) and title attributes (for standard users using standard browsers which may need more support):
<button
aria-label="Back to the page"
title="Close" onclick="myDialog.close()">X</button>
Buttons that do not have text that describes their intended action or otherwise. (e.g. An icon / image that switches the context of a carousel)
The same reasoning can apply to this point. But for blind people, moving a carousel to the left or to the right is a different experience, sometimes useless. If they can ignore that what they see is a carousel, without losing any content, navigating with the keyboard or their assistive technology, then you are doing what is expected.
Also, you have to never forget that accessibility does not only target blind users, but also children, old people, people with cognitive or sensitive disabilities. For instance, the aria-label will never be sufficient enough to help those people when needed. They do not have a screen reader, and they do not read the HTML source code.
In the case of users using "speech-recognition software" (yep, they are not a lot but let's improve their life), not having any visible text can also lead to difficulties.
Related
For the HTML title attribute, Mozilla's docs mention...
Use of the title attribute is highly problematic for:
People using touch-only devices
People navigating with keyboards
People navigating with assistive technology such as screen readers or magnifiers
People experiencing fine motor control impairment
People with cognitive concerns
This gives me a seed of doubt whether I can innocuously use title all over the place.
Would the mere existence of title actually introduce problems for certain users?
Or put another way, is there any benefit using title other than for showing-supplementary-information-as-rudimentary-tooltips-for-mouse-users-that-hover-an-element?
I'm just trying to maximize my UX & accessibility optimizations to 110%.
I can conceive of three different problems that using title attributes can introduce for those various groups.
No access
Some users don't use technology that would display the title attribute. This isn't a problem is the title attribute contains information that isn't required to understand the content.
Physically getting in the way
A tooltip might cover up some other information when it is rendered. You can probably compensate for this with space. Don't cram everything together. Allow enough room on a hover target so a tooltip can render in empty space, or at least space that doesn't contain information about the element being hovered.
Interruptions
If you scatter titles in the middle of a sentence, then I expect some screen readers will interrupt the sentence to read the tooltip. This won't make it easy to understand the document if it happens a lot.
I wouldn't go overboard with them.
(Related, but less of an accessibility issue, if the titles duplicate information in the text, then it is going to be very repetitive and annoying).
That depends, as always. Usage of the title attribute is not harmful, but relying on it is.
To quote the HTML standard:
Relying on the title attribute is currently discouraged as many user agents do not expose the attribute in an accessible manner as required by this specification (e.g., requiring a pointing device such as a mouse to cause a tooltip to appear, which excludes keyboard-only users and touch-only users, such as anyone with a modern phone or tablet).
https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/dom.html#the-title-attribute
Mostly, title is used to implement the tooltip pattern, which is then not very accessible, as stated.
So if you provide that supplemental information by accessible means as well, the title attribute does most likely not harm.
“[…] is there any benefit using title other than for showing-supplementary-information-as-rudimentary-tooltips-for-mouse-users-that-hover-an-element?”
Well, the WCAG accept title attributes as a sufficient technique to explain abbreviations in an <abbr> element or to label form controls, even though actual technical support is not great.
To name <iframe> elements it is still the only documented sufficient technique
If you use it on <style> and <link> elements, it allows the browser to provide a style switcher.
<link rel="stylesheet" href="dark.css" title="Dark Theme">
See also The Trials and Tribulations of the Title Attribute
Is the following HTML accessible?
<a id="myClickbaitArticlePreview" href="someUrl">
<h3>Amazing lifehack! Doctors hate him!</h3>
<img alt="doctor is staring down a patient" src="procativeThumbnail">
<p>Compelling copy</p>
</a>
I know it's valid based on this answer. But is it accessible? Cause I am auditing a website with a similar article structure using a screen reader (JAWS). The reader reads everything in a single breath which is confusing (but I am not blind so I don't know if you get used to it). It also reads the alt right after the title, which in many cases may repeat the content.
Short Answer
It is both valid and "accessible" in the loosest sense of the term, a good experience for screen reader users - probably not.
It would pass all WCAG guidance, let's put it that way.
Longer Answer
Without seeing it in the context of the page though it is hard to tell you whether this is the best practice. A few things to consider:-
Is there sufficient white space around these large "link cards" for people with mobility / accuracy / dexterity issues to safely place their finger to scroll the page on a mobile device.
If the link card is focused is the focus indicator easy to see and sufficient contrast etc. (standard thing to check for but often forgotten on card type links)
If a screen reader user cycles the page via headings is it logical to have a <h3> in the card, both in terms of heading hierarchy and in terms of page hierarchy.
Are the alt descriptions correct in their context, if the image is not directly related they may be better being hidden from screen reader users with aria-hidden or an empty (not null) alt attribute (alt="" NOT alt). I would almost certainly say this will be the case but yet again that is your judgement.
alt being the same as the <h3> title - this is almost certainly a big no no. alt attributes should describe the image in context. If the alt text is the same as the title then make the image presentational / hidden from screen readers as discussed in the previous point.
Should these be <article> elements to be semantically correct?
Are they contained in an <ul> so that a screen reader user knows how many items there are?
would an aria-label on the hyperlink with a condensed version of the text be appropriate (to override the text inside the hyperlink)? It depends on the content so use best judgement.
Would a hyperlink styled to look like a button at the end of each article be better? If so make sure it doesn't just say "read more" (although at a push you could have "read more" as the button text and have some visually hidden text that says "Amazing lifehack! Doctors hate him!" before it).
As you can tell, without seeing them in context there is lot's of things we cannot tell you but hopefully the above should give you a few things to think about.
As for the screen reader reading everything in a single breath, that is expected behaviour, you just need to get used to it! You could always slow the speech rate in the settings or increase the announcer verbosity (so it has more detail about what element you are in relative to other elements) while you get used to it.
According to HTML standards, the a element has a transparent content model with the sole exception that it can't contain interactive elements.
An heading is not an interactive element. So that's good according to the standards.
Regarding accessibility the text link is not optimized.
WCAG in 2.4.4: Link Purpose (In Context) expect a "meaningful link". Having too much information is not a good practice. A better alternative would be to provide a javascript click handler on a <div> while only having the HTML link element on the h3 here.
In your example "doctor is staring down a patient" does not describe the link destination and should not be part of the link text alternative.
Can someone advise me if there is a specific WCAG 2.1 failure when buttons are used as links. Same question vice versa. Links as buttons.
I have a site i am working on where by design there are links that appear the same as the buttons do.
So you may have buttons <button> like:
Edit details - which takes you to a new page where you can edit items in the page where the "edit details resides".
Continue - a button that takes you to the next page in a series of pages.
But then have links <a> which appear as buttons, so the same style, but they are labelled select, select and selected and these are a product type, so do not link anywhere.
Another example is the back link is a button<button> but looks like a link (text with underlined style)!
I know that this behavior confuses voice recognition as the user says click link or click buttonand not all objects get flagged that appear the same.
My question is does this fail WCAG2.1 specifically? Would this fall under 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value?
The 4.1.2: Name, Role, Value undestanding addresses the case of elements having different role than usual.
If custom controls are created, however, or interface elements are programmed (in code or script) to have a different role and/or function than usual, then additional measures need to be taken to ensure that the controls provide important information to assistive technologies and allow themselves to be controlled by assistive technologies.
As Adam already cited, "additional measures need to be taken to ensure that the controls provide important information to assistive technologies and allow themselves to be controlled by assistive technologies". So yes, this fails WCAG 2.1, unless you take measures to ensure that your button-links and link-buttons really work as they are supposed to for example that a <a role="button" […] can be triggered using the Space key.
If you really have accessibility in mind, don't mix <button> and <a> elements up. Not even if you think you are smart and add role="button" to a link or role="link to a button. You would have to do more than that to make them behave like each other (see MDN about the button role).
And even then you should consider this: links are for navigation, buttons for performing actions. If you have a navigational element that looks like a button, its behavior might be confusing (even if it has no role="button" attribute). Also note that the default value for a button's type attribute is submit ("The missing value default and invalid value default are the Submit Button state.").
Web accessibility should encompass all disabilities that affect access to the Web and there are a lot of possible disabilities – and having one disability does not necessarily mean a person has no other disabilities.
The easiest step of making your website more accessible is to stick to the standards. Don't change an element's behavior unless you really have to (and even then: do you really have to?).
Update: General comment about WCAG and accessibility:
Web accessibility is also not just about simply conforming to guidelines like the WCAG. Even the WCAG itself does not claim that a website will be 100% accessible when conforming to it:
Note that even content that conforms at the highest level (AAA) will not be accessible to individuals with all types, degrees, or combinations of disability, particularly in the cognitive language and learning areas. Authors are encouraged to consider the full range of techniques, including the advisory techniques, as well as to seek relevant advice about current best practice to ensure that Web content is accessible, as far as possible, to this community.
Update: Examples of possible violations of WCAG 2.1 (with room for interpretation though)
Just letting links look like buttons and nothing could be failing:
Guideline 3.2 Predictable in general ("Make Web pages appear and operate in predictable ways.")
Success Criterion 3.2.4 Consistent Identification (unless all links look like buttons; the only actual success criterion in these examples)
4. Robust in general ("Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted by by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies." & Guideline 4.1 Compatible "Maximize compatibility with current and future user agents, including assistive technologies." --> you already mentioned voice recognition and the possibility of not being able to target a link because it looks like a button)
Jonathan Pool wrote a blog article about this issue in which he points out another possible violation:
Worst case: A button that takes an irreversible action ("Yes, I confirm that I am waiving my rights.") pretends to be a link, so the user tries to use SPACE or SHIFT-SPACE to scroll the page but unexpectedly presses the button. This, arguably, would violate Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 Success Criterion 3.3.4.
I am working on creating accessible help text for my form controls. I am planning to use aria-describedby to attach a accessible description to a field. This approach is discussed here
Although in my testing with ChromeVox extension and Windows 10 screen reader I have found out that aria-describedby is not announced, but it is rather well supported across browsers and screenreaders, so i am planning to use this approach.
Also this suggests that in some cases aria-describedby would be ignored or not work as expected but these cases are quite specific and i am generally ok with it.
aria-describedby content may not always be announced to users,
depending on their screen reader and navigation method. The attribute
is well supported, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some things to
be aware of: aria-describedby content may not be announced by all
screen readers if navigating to a button, link, or form control with
the virtual cursor. JAWS specifically may not announce an element’s
description when using hot keys to navigate to certain elements. When
navigating by visited links, the description will not be announced.
However JAWS should announce descriptions when navigating by form
controls. JAWS 17 + IE won’t announce aria-describedby content when
tabbing to a link (newer version of JAWS have fixed this). IE11 won’t
announce the accessible name or description of a form control if the
title attribute is used in tandem with aria-describedby, and the
user is navigating by virtual cursor or form control hot key (F). Both
will be announced if using the Tab key. (IE11 had much bigger problems
with aria-describedby in the past.) TalkBack + Android Chrome won’t
announce any aria-describedby content of a modal dialog when
auto-focusing an element within that dialog. If a user has
descriptions or hint text turned off, any associated content won’t be
announced. Because of this, it’s vital that any content that is
necessary to the understanding of a UI be available by means other
than just aria-describedby.
I would like to understand if there are times when aria-describedby would not be announced automatically? The previous link phrasing seems to suggest that it is only going to be announced on request :
By using aria-describedby to reference the format of the field, this
information is made available to the users on request. That is, it is
not automatically displayed or read aloud. This makes sense if the
user has been informed of the format before, or when there are lots of
input fields with the same format, for example.
I don't get what it means by "on request". I believe that the default behavior is to announce the aria-describedby text after announcing the label and the input type.
The behavior of aria-describedby (like aria-label and aria-labeledby) is profoundly influenced by the role of the element where they appear.
As you may know screenreaders generally have two 'modes', and this is mostly determined by the role (or default semantics) of the content.
I have certainly had problems getting non-interactive elements announced, if they appear within interactive ("forms mode") content.
I have had good results using aria-describedby with modal content. (Put the attribute on the modal, and point at the text elements inside which you want announced when the modal opens.) But I suppose this is because there is an obvious moment where the screenreader is supposed to make those announcements: the moment when the modal opens.
In the case that the form (or other "forms mode" container) is always present on the page, you can usually read the non-interactive content using browse-mode key combinations such as "next heading" ("H" on NVDA and JAWS) or "next paragraph" ("P"). Check to see if these 'requests' are enough of a solution.
You might also experiment with the standard HTML elements fieldset and legend, whose purpose is providing a text description for groups of interactive elements.
Also consider treating the 'form' (or toolbar or whatever) as a single tab stop, and use arrow keys to navigate the components within. This way, when you give focus to the container, you should get an announcement of whatever is aria-describedby (or indeed aria-labeledby/aria-label)
If this isn't working for you, there are a couple of hacks you might try as a last resort:
Put tabindex="-1" on the element surrounding the text you want
announced, and then call focus() on that element at the appropriate
moment.
Copy the text into the textContent of an aria-live region
with javaScript at the appropriate moment.
Neither of these hacks are pretty, and might not suit you, if there is no 'appropriate moment'. (There's no equivalent of onfocus for browse mode). But with a little care, they can be made to work.
The following HTML is inserted by the jQuery Grid plugin:
<td role="gridcell" style="" aria-describedby="list_createdBy">Sam</td>
What is the meaning of the 'aria-describedby' property?
This is described in the aria specification. It gives the id of an element that provides some additional information about the current element that some users might need.
Here below is an example of how you could use the aria-describedby property. It is used when you have a text that has information about the element. Aria-describedby must be the same as the id of the text that describes it.
First name: <input aria-describedby="name" type="text">
<em id="name">Your first name must be correct.</em>
At the first glance I'd say aria-describedby is likely to be ignored here because it's defined on <td>. Most browsers and screen readers will ignore aria-describedby information when set on element which is not interactive (focusable).
But the specific example a bit more complex due to role="gridcell" which overrides the semantics of <td> and therefore the provided example is valid if it follows the ARIA specification for gridcell. It's a custom component.
Generally speaking the attribute aria-describedby provides the screen reader with the additional information to be announced along the content of the element (not the only but the most common use-case).
For example instead of only "Logout" the screen reader will announce "Logout, John Doe":
Logged-in as <span id="user">John Doe</span>.
<a aria-describedby="user" href="/logout">Logout</a>
Or example with a tooltip (Hint: Javascript part is missing here):
<button type="button" aria-describedby="my-tooltip">Snipping Tool</button>
<div hidden id="my-tooltip" role="tooltip">
It can take still screenshots of an open window,
rectangular areas, a free-form area,
or the entire screen.
</div>
Or example with a form element, another common use-case:
<form ...>
<label for="my-name">Full name</label>
<input aria-describedby="my-name-desc" id="my-name" type="text"/>
<p id="my-name-desc">
Please tell us your full name.
</p>
</form>
The example above will announce both <label> and the additional description (defined by aria-describedby) immediately when a user focuses the input field. Not only that it eliminates a need to read the surroundings to be able to understand what is expected to enter but also reading all elements other than form controls when inside of the <form> might be more complex for a screen reader user. It's a different experience then reading the rest of the page. Because keyboard events can either interact with screen readers or with form controls, but hardly with both in the same time. Not to mention that screen readers offer bunch of useful keyboard shortcuts for example pressing "H" will jump to a next heading but obviously not when <input> field is focused. Then "H" will be entered into <input>.
About ARIA:
ARIA is commonly used to improve the accessibility for screen readers (not only but mostly atm.).
Using ARIA does not necessarily make things better! Easily ARIA can lead to significantly worse accessibility if not implemented and tested properly. Don't use ARIA just to have some "cool things in the code" which you don't fully understand. Sadly too often ARIA implementations introduce more issues than solutions in terms of accessibility. This is rather common since sighted users and developers are less likely to put extra effort in extensive testing with screen readers while on the other hand ARIA specs and validators are currently far from perfect and even confusing in some cases. On top of that each browser and screen reader implement the ARIA support non-uniformly causing the major inconsistencies in the behavior. Often it's better idea to avoid ARIA completely when it's not clear exactly what it does, how it behaves and it won't be tested intensively with all screen readers and browsers (or at least the most common combinations). Disclaimer: My intention is not to disgrace ARIA but rather its bad ARIA implementations. In fact it's not so uncommon that HTML5 don't offer any other alternatives where implementing ARIA would bring significant benefits for the accessibility e.g. aria-hidden or aria-expanded. But only if implemented and tested properly!
About aria-describedby
Provides the additional information along the content of the element
Works as expected on focusable elements (e.g. button, input, a). Mostly useless on other elements ("mostly" there are exceptions)
IE 11 is a bit tricky. Sometimes it's ignored. It might make a difference if implemented on a or button as well if referenced element is hidden (display:none), its position (is the inner element referenced?) or if it has tabindex="-1" or role (e.g. role="none") on it etc. Make sure to test all screen readers
Might behave differently if a screen reader is used in a focus mode (TAB key) or virtual mode (reading the content with ARROW keys)
Both Firefox and Internet Explorer respect aria-describedby only in focus mode. As such, it does not make sense to add it to non-focusable elements. From: ADG
While NVDA announces descriptions right away, JAWS sometimes prompts to manually press JAWS+Alt+R to announce it. From: ADG
If referenced element is hidden it's not searchable with Ctrl+F (which is a common way the users like to navigate the website to quickly find what they look for). From: ADG
The only case where we truly recommend the usage of aria-describedby, is to attach additional information to interactive elements (e.g. to relate visible information e.g. to form controls). From: ADG
Good idea: Using combination of aria-describedby (on a form control) and role="alert" (on a SPAN) for a form control error. From: W3.org
Basically,
aria-describedby property is used to attach descriptive information to one or more HTML tags through the use of an id reference list( an id reference list contains one or more unique HTML tag ids).
aria-describedby property is very similar to aria-labelledby property( a label which describes the essence of a HTML tag) but aria-describedby property provides more information about a HTML tag that user might need.
The properties aria-describedby and aria-labelledby are mainly useful to the users who use assistive technologies like a screen reader.
For reference:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/ARIA_Techniques/Using_the_aria-describedby_attribute
https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/ARIA1.html