Web Governance
All user interface components have a name
Sight impairments: Who access the site contents with a screen reader or screen magnification software.
Motion impairments: Who navigate the page with speech recognition software.
Sandra is 38 years old. At the age of 16, her life took an unexpected turn during a sports accident on the basketball court. While attempting a daring dunk, she landed in an awkward manner, resulting in a spinal cord injury. Unfortunately, this event left her paralyzed from the waist down.
“I prefer to use voice commands for my computer rather than a mouse. It really hurts if I have to mess around with the mouse too much. When everything works well, I can just tell the computer what button to click, like "Click new appointment" when I am setting up a new booking for one of my clients. But sometimes, it just does not work on websites. I do not know all the technical stuff, but it is something about the buttons not being labeled properly, so I cannot tell the computer to activate them. When that happens, I have to use the mouse. I can do it, but it takes me three times as long, and if I overdo it, the pain kicks in.”
A service website includes a chat function that allows users to ask questions to the company’s customer service. The user interface features buttons with icons that provide access to the following functions: Start Chat, Attach File, Add Emoji, Clear Chat, and Send. Because the user interface controls have accessible names, screen reader programs used by blind individuals can communicate button functions in a meaningful way to users who cannot visually see the icons.
The image shows how the screen reader presents a list of named elements that match the icons in the chat function's user interface.
A service website includes a chat function that allows users to ask questions to the company’s customer service. The user interface features buttons with icons for functions like Start Chat, Attach File, Add Emoji, Clear Chat, and Send. However, the user interface controls do not have accessible names. As a result, the screen reader only shows a list of unnamed buttons. This means that users who rely on screen readers hear only generic descriptions like "Unlabelled button," which makes it impossible for them to understand the specific function of each icon.
The image shows how the screen reader presents these buttons without meaningful descriptions, which leads to confusion and difficulty in navigating the chat function.
The Acquia Web Governance platform highlights user input controls that do not have an accessible name.
There are several ways to add accessible names to user input controls. View the examples below for ways in which you do it.
The aria-label can be used to set an accessible name for a button.
Web Governance<button aria-label="Send email">
<img src="send-email-icon.png" alt=""/>
</button>The aria-label can be used to set an accessible name for a link that doesn’t have text in it.
<a aria-label="Contact us at">
<img src="social-media-icon.png" alt=""/>
</a>The aria-label can be used to set an accessible name for a menu item that doesn’t have text in it.
<a role=”menuitem” aria-label="Get more info">
<i class=”info icon”></i>
</a>The title attribute can be used to set an accessible name for an iframe.
<iframe src="https://example.com" title="Good describing accessible name for embedded content"></iframe>For instructions on how to review an accessibility issue and set it to reviewed, see the user guide article:
Related accessibility conformance testing rules.
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