Clarification of change TEC-3424 regarding HTML sectioning

  • Resolved mrwweb

    (@mrwweb)


    6 months, 2 weeks ago

    The 6.12.0 changelog entry includes this note:

    Accessibility – Change wrapper div to a section tag to avoid multiple ‘banner’ landmarks. [TEC-3424]

    The Events Calendar 6.12.0 Changelog

    Here’s the relevant pull request.

    I’d like to understand why this change was made and potentially request that it be reverted for the following reasons:

    1. The changelog entry doesn’t really make sense. How was a div with no role attribute resulting in a “banner” landmark?
    2. Unlike a div, a section element *IS* a landmark. Now, the new markup contains a new unlabeled page landmark. (I certainly don’t want that on my sites.) The section element is the most generic landmark, and should almost always be labeled.
    3. Most importantly, this new section doesn’t seem to be wrapping a meaningfully section of the page. It appears to basically be redundant with a main element since it wraps the entire primary content of the page including paging navigation. (And the theme should be providing the main element / it should be higher up in TEC’s themes, probably in the default-template.php file.)

    I am open to possibly misunderstanding this change, but from everything I’ve looked at, it appears to likely stem from misunderstanding a problem or solution for an accessibility problem and instead introducing a new one.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Plugin Support tristan083

    (@tristan083)

    6 months, 2 weeks ago

    Hi @mrwweb ,

    Thank you for reaching out and bringing this to our attention.

    Let me get some clarifications about this change from our product team and get back to you. Reading through the internal report, it looks like an accessibility issue (Document must not have more than one banner landmark) was flagged by a third-party accessibility checker tool when the <div> element was used, which prompted the change.

    Thread Starter mrwweb

    (@mrwweb)

    6 months, 2 weeks ago

    @tristan083 Thanks for the quick response and looking into this more deeply. That issue is a helpful clue. Here’s my guess as to what’s going on.

    • That is a valid accessibility issue one would want to resolve
    • The banner landmark is created by a header element that is not a descendant of any other element that generates a landmark. My guess is that the header.tribe-events-header is the offending element.
    • HOWEVER, introducing a new landmark that doesn’t really make sense would “fix” the issue in the eyes of a checker, but not necessarily make the page make more sense

    So the two general solutions to the issue are:

    1. Change the header.tribe-events-header element to be a div
    2. (Better) Introduce a landmark that makes more sense. I normally resolve this known issue on my own sites by customizing tribe/events/v2/default-template.php so that line 19 is wrapped in a main element that matches all other page templates. A main rather than section element in this change would be fairly similar, though it would certainly break all my own themes by introducing a “more than one main element” issue. (I’d accept that as the cost of TEC resolving an accessibility issue!) Note that while on some pages it might make sense to use an article element in place of that section, it would not make sense on pages listing multiple events.

    I hope this is useful, and I’m happy to continue chatting about finding a better solution.

    Plugin Support Darian

    (@d0153)

    6 months, 1 week ago

    Hi @mrwweb

    Thanks so much for your message. I’ve already passed along your additional feedback to the team for their review—your input is incredibly valuable.

    In the meantime, I’ve created an internal ticket [TECTRIA-1025] to track this issue, and I’ve made sure to include your specific use case so the team fully understands the impact. Rest assured, we’re taking this seriously and I’ll keep you updated with any progress.

    We prioritize bugs by taking into consideration the number of users impacted as well as how the bug impacts one’s ability to run an event/sell tickets. I don’t have a specific timeline as to when this issue will be resolved, but trust that our team is aware. Our team communicates updates and bug fixes in our newsletter and via our changelog.

    I’m happy to help if any other questions are coming up around this topic, otherwise I’ll go ahead and close this ticket.

    Thanks again for reporting this issue and for using The Events Calendar! Have a great day.

    —

    Internal Bug Ticket Reference: TECTRIA-1025

    Thread Starter mrwweb

    (@mrwweb)

    6 months, 1 week ago

    Hi @d0153 ,

    Thanks for the response. I appreciate the need to prioritize! One thing I will say is that font-end markup churn always impacts folks developing with The Events Calendar (often your biggest promoters), and so it would be good to sort this out sooner than later, especially if it’s going to get reverted and or changed.

    For the future, I would encourage getting a more complete accessibility audit done by someone who can interpret errors and recommend appropriate fixes, and then making a batch of template changes all at the same time. (I have more I’d recommend!)

    Plugin Support Darian

    (@d0153)

    6 months, 1 week ago

    Hi @mrwweb

    I appreciate you sharing your feedback — I’ll be sure to pass it along to the team. Don’t hesitate to reach out again if you have any other questions or need further assistance.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

The topic ‘Clarification of change TEC-3424 regarding HTML sectioning’ is closed to new replies.