Signs it is time to revisit ARIA labels

Every audit we run turns up some version of this. A few signals that ARIA labels is due some attention.

Accessibility work almost always improves the experience for people who have no impairment at all. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

The signals

• Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
• The answer depends on who you ask
• No ARIA is better than wrong ARIA
• Use it only when native elements cannot do the job

What good looks like

Labels must match what the control actually does. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.

What this looks like day to day

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
• Use it only when native elements cannot do the job — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

The point is not perfection, it is knowing which of these you have consciously chosen to skip.