The difference between aria-label and aria-labelledby
aria-label and aria-labelledby do the same job but in different ways, and it's easy to confuse them with unintended results. This post explains the differences and how to choose the right one.
ARIA
Using the aria-roledescription attribute
The `aria-roledescription` attribute changes how screen readers announce element roles, intended to provide localised, human-readable descriptions—but it has the capacity to both enhance and seriously break accessibility for screen reader users.
Accessible SVG flowcharts
I've used ARIA table semantics to make SVG line graphs accessible to screen readers, and I'm now using the same approach to make an SVG flowchart accessible too.
Playing with the Accessibility Object Model (AOM)
The Accessibility Object Model (AOM) is an experimental JavaScript API that enables developers to modify the browser accessibility tree, with phase one support recently landing in Chrome Canary behind a flag.
Accessible SVG line graphs
SVG is often used for data visualisation, but it lacks the semantics to express structures like bar charts and line graphs, making content difficult for screen reader users to interpret. The solution is to use accessible SVG table techniques as your starting point.
Accessible SVG tables
SVG has no native table semantics, but ARIA1.1 introduces roles that can polyfill the necessary information, making SVG tables more accessible for screen reader users.
Quick guide to the ARIA specifications
I'm briefly introducing each ARIA specification from the W3C and explaining where each one fits into the overall ARIA landscape.
Using the aria-current attribute
Highlighting the current item in a collection visually is common on the web, but providing an alternative for screen reader users has often involved hacks—that's where the `aria-current` attribute comes in to solve this problem.
Accessible emoji
Emoji help us communicate complex ideas easily, but on the web we need to make sure everyone can understand them — screen readers don't always recognise emoji without the right markup.
Proposed ARIA password role
I'd never enter my password into a field I wasn't confident was protected from view, but a proposed ARIA password role could put screen reader users in exactly that position.