How to get ARIA labels right
This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. The short answer to ARIA labels is that it is mostly a sequence of small decisions, not one big one.
Accessibility work almost always improves the experience for people who have no impairment at all. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.
The reason this keeps coming up
No ARIA is better than wrong ARIA. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.
The steps
- Establish what you have today before changing anything
- Use it only when native elements cannot do the job
- Labels must match what the control actually does
- Write down the decision so the next person does not re-litigate it
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.
What to do next
In practice
Most of it is correctness rather than charity: use the right element and much of it happens automatically. Three things worth confirming about ARIA labels before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Labels must match what the control actually does — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.