Before you invest in ARIA labels

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. Before you spend anything on ARIA labels, it is worth confirming a few things are already true.

Most of it is correctness rather than charity: use the right element and much of it happens automatically. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

Prerequisites

• You can describe the outcome you want in one sentence
• Someone owns it after the work is done
• No ARIA is better than wrong ARIA
• You have a way to tell whether it worked

Common failure modes

Use it only when native elements cannot do the job. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

Labels must match what the control actually does. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

How to tell if yours is fine

The cost of retrofitting accessibility is several times the cost of building it in. Three things worth confirming about ARIA labels before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• No ARIA is better than wrong ARIA — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.