No ARIA is better than bad ARIA

https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/practices/read-me-first/

54•robin_reala•6d ago

Comments

simonw•1h ago

Something I'm desperately keen to see is AI-assisted accessibility testing.

I'm not convinced at all by most of the heuristic-driven ARIA scanning tools. I don't want to know if my app appears to have the right ARIA attributes set - I want to know if my features work for screenreader users.

What I really want is for a Claude Code style agent to be able to drive my application in an automated fashion via a screenreader and record audio for me of successful or failed attempts to achieve goals.

Think Playwright browser tests but for popular screenreaders instead.

Every now and then I check to see if this is a solved problem yet.

I think we are close. https://www.guidepup.dev/ looks extremely promising - though I think it only supports VoiceOver on macOS or NVDA on Windows, which is a shame since asynchronous coding agent tools like Codex CLI and Claude Code for web only run Linux.

What I haven't seen yet is someone closing the loop on ensuring agentic tools like Claude Code can successfully drive these mechanisms.

simonw•59m ago

... I just saw Guidepup has an official GitHub Actions setup action, so that's great news! https://github.com/guidepup/setup-action

On macOS it can record audio too.

PebblesHD•45m ago

Rather than improving testing for fallible accessibility assists, why not leverage AI to eliminate the need for them? An agent on your device can interpret the same page a sighted or otherwise unimpaired person would giving you as a disabled user the same experience they would have. Why would that not be preferable? It also puts you in control of how you want that agent to interpret pages.

eru•37m ago

What you are describing is something the end user can do.

What simonw was describing is something the author can do, and end user can benefit whether they use AI or not.

simonw•20m ago

I'm optimistic that modern AI will lead to future improvements in accessibility tech, but for the moment I want to meet existing screenreader users where they are and ensure the products I build are as widely accessible as possible.

askew•34m ago

Guidepup also includes a Virtual Screenreader[1].

[1] https://www.guidepup.dev/docs/virtual

edflsafoiewq•28m ago

Can screen readers emit their narration as text instead of / in addition to audio?

i-con•1h ago

No CSS is better than bad CSS

In my browser that "Page Contents" box is hovering above the end of the line, so I can't read the full text. Kind of ironic, that this is on w3.org

the_other•12m ago

> No CSS is better than bad CSS

That's only true if the markup and JS are also good. If, for sake of argument, the HTML had been badly authored such that the links in that menu were DIVs with click event handlers, rather than real links, then removing CSS would likely make the experience worse rather than better.

I guess that a key point underpinning your comment is that progressive enhancement is still better than assuming all potential users are on the bleeding edge, despite the evergreen update pattern for the most popular 3 or 4 browsers.

gampleman•43m ago

Is this really true? Messaging like this will cause a lot of developers to just give up. Most places I've worked at did accessibility at best as a best effort sort of thing. After reading this, there will be no attempts made to improve the state of affairs.

Perhaps that will be an improvement? I don't know.

askew•32m ago

The statement is about encouraging folks to use the platform: `<button>Hello!</button>` over `<div role=button tabindex=0>Hello</div>`

austin-cheney•22m ago

ARIA is often a compensating technology more than a primary solution. I try to not use ARIA in my own code aside from the role attribute. I instead rely on the clear navigation and order HTML content and events as my primary solutions.

nabla9•6m ago

It is true. This is not messaging. They are not selling you ARIA.

If you are developer, just write semantically clear HTML instead. Just doing something is worse than doing nothing in accessibility.

Bengalilol•13m ago

2 cents here. Let's make this article optimistic and forward looking.

That's somehow intriguing to write an article that says "no" without providing "yes" examples. I don't view this as very generous.

Looking for further updates.

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Comments

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