Using WAI-ARIA landmark roles to increase accessibility

One of the most neglected aspects of the web is accessibility, unless you are part of a group dedicated to this subject. As web designers and web developers, we rarely think about handicapped users accessing the web and using our websites or apps with screen readers and other assistive technologies. We actually think first about supporting legacy browsers rather than increasing the accessibility of our products.

In this chapter, we're going to touch on what WAI-ARIA landmark roles are and how they can be easily implemented in our markup, enhancing the semantics of our documents to provide those users with assistive technology a better and pleasant experience when they navigate our websites/apps with their keyboards on any modern browser.

Note

WAI-ARIA stands for Web Accessibility Initiative – Accessible Rich Internet Applications.

WAI-ARIA landmark roles

WAI-ARIA landmark roles can also be referred to as ARIA roles, so that's the term we...