: Should I be using WAI-ARIA in my HTML website builds? Should I be using WAI-ARIA in my website builds? Will it have any benefit? Is anyone adding 'role' to their code at the moment? Some

@Murray155

This. is. crap.

I've long catered to the blind community. I use alt on all my images and have always done so. I expand every abbr. I use accessibility web "checkers" and validators. I bend over backward to provide an accessible site.

But, this stuff has to stop.

Per the blog post listed above.


While it might seem that the nav tag would defining the nav element’s “role,” not every browser will understand it (just because the browser can display it, does not mean it understands the tag).


Look, if you're blind and you can't update your browser to an HTML5 compatible reader, we need to start to look at you in the same light we look at IE6 users. You may be blind; but, you're not stupid. Being blind is not an excuse for being lazy. You simply need a new screen reader.

<div class="sr_only">
<span role="navigation">
<span role="heading">
<span role="article">
<span role="search">
Dear Blind community, we write semantic HMTL5 for a purpose.
Update your screen reader!


This is a test of tolerance where the whole world is shouldering a stupid idea to accommodate archaic technology. Granted, at least those bending over backwards aren't doing it to make a buck, but by now you should be using a screen reader with at least biyearly updates.

Also important, is that a lot of these things mess up newer screen readers when done wrong. For instance, <nav> is typically a mere container for a <ul>. If you have a <ul role="navigation"> under a <nav> you could run into a problem with useless verbosity.

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@Bryan171

OK I have been doing some thinking and research around this since you asked this.

It is now my opinion that you should use them, and I intend to start bringing them into projects.

Just because they aren't available doesn't mean they can't be parsed by assistive technologies and if they help to even add a little bit of semantic value then why not?

If more webmasters adopted WAI-ARIA we could start to see more of the benefits and limitations.

Since there are some positives, and no negatives (save the slight bump in write time and HTML size) I say go for it.

Here is an interesting blog post on the subject.

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