Accessibility

Sunday, 16 Dec. 2012

ARIA Landmarkroles enable visually impaired people to navigate to specific elements in webpages with screenreaders.
Although ARIA seems a rather simple solution, an implementation makes a huge difference. We all can try to navigate a webpage with a Tab key and experience a method to jump from element to element.

With this method we have to read all the elements until we have an overview of the page.

By implementing Landmarkroles in a page source, specific elements can be visited in a similar way as the Tab key (with a screenreader), but also skip over some elements and improve accessibility.

Some basic Landmarkroles

<div class='header' role='banner'>
<div id='Search' role='search'>
<div id='MainMenu' role='navigation'>
<div id='Archive' role='complementary'>
<div id='MainContent' role='main'>
<div id='Article' role='article'></div>
<div id='Footer' role='contentinfo'>

On the W3C page you can find the specifications for Landmarkroles.

On my accessibility-demo you will find a Aria demonstration implementation in a TiddlyWiki and more information about other accessibility methods.