It always makes me think of epic operatics
I think it was 5 years into product design before I wrote my first aria-labels for a product. Even then, they weren’t really contextual copy for accessibility. They were descriptive, but not necessarily in a useful way. ARIA-labels, for the uninitiated, btw, are bits of text that you can tell screenreaders to read when they come across a specific element in your markup. For example, if you have a 3 part form, you can include an aria label that provides context for how many steps are in the form at the beginning of the form element. We use visual affordances constantly to give users a lil taste of what is to come, but often the experience of our products via screenreader lacks these sorts of cues. Now I’m just thinking more about the emotional design of aria label copy. If we are to extend not just basic usability for screenreader-dependent users, but a delightful experience..how do we best go about doing that? I’m gonna be putting together some proofs of concepts around some ideas and find some relevant users to see how they work.
