Landmark label text is ambiguous

[ZoeBijl]

Step 3 under General Principles of Landmark Design reads:

If a specific landmark role is used more than once on a web page, it should have a unique label.

What does this mean? Does it mean that all instances excluding the initial one need a label? Does it mean all instances need a label?

To me it makes sense that all instances have a label.

[jkva]

Agreed. Once more than one landmark of the same role exists on a page, there can be no ambiguity and unique labels become necessary. Assigning implicit meaning to one unlabelled landmark role in a set of labelled identical roles smells of bad design.

[mcking65]

There are some scenarios where forcing uniqueness makes the accessible experience worse. For example:

• main contains a large table of search results.
• The table has two identical sets of pagination controls; one above and one below.
• Both sets of pagination controls are wrapped in <nav aria-label="search results".

Yes, you could ask for a design change so there is only one set of controls that does not scroll out of view. That possibility doesn't eliminate the existence of the scenario where there are two regions with identical content that do the same thing.

When I have seen this type of situation, every tweak I've toyed with to create uniqueness just makes the experience worse. So, I've advocated that it is better for the regions to have identical labels.

Perhaps this is a circumstance that is far more rare now than it was 8 or 10 years ago. When is the last time any of you have seen anything like it?

[jkva]

@mcking65 the example you gave is a fair one. Given the documentation says should rather than must, each case is still covered. Optionally we could rewrite this to say:

If a specific landmark role is used more than once on a web page, ideally it should have a unique label.

Or provide an example for when duplicate landmark labels makes sense, such as the scenario you described.

[mcking65]

@jkva, thank you for the feedback. @MichielBijl, thank you for raising the issue.

We now have a resolution with commit e8e10ea from pull request 687. Closing.