Optimization (accessibility): [aria-hidden="true"] elements contain focusable descendants

[rfultz]

Background

Looking to optimize the site's performance and that of the homepage specifically, the Lighthouse tool in Chromium browsers has made some suggestions. Some of these will have repercussions throughout the app so we're going to make them their own tickets.

Accessibility Recommendation: [aria-hidden="true"] elements contain focusable descendants

Focusable descendants within an [aria-hidden="true"] element prevent those interactive elements from being available to users of assistive technologies like screen readers. details

Overview

We should check aria-hidden attribute of #site-menu.site-nav__container

Benefit (the 80 of 80/20)

Significant if we're currently hiding our main nav from screen readers by default?

Effort (the 20 of 80/20)

Seemingly minimal

Complications

Will this change complicate layout in Chrome, etc—is there a reason it's like this?

Related tickets

• Preload key requests
• Remove unused JavaScript
• Remove unused CSS
• Preconnect to required origins
• Eliminate render-blocking resources
• Ensure text remains visible during webfont load
• Reduce the impact of third-party code
• Does not use passive listeners to improve scrolling performance
• Image elements do not have explicit width and height
• Serve static assets with an efficient cache policy
• Minimize main-thread work
• Avoid an excessive DOM size
• Reduce JavaScript execution time
• Avoid enormous network payloads
• Elements with an ARIA [role] that require children to contain a specific [role] are missing some or all of those required children
• [aria-*] attributes do not have valid values
• ARIA IDs are not unique
• Lists do not contain only
• elements and script supporting elements (<script> and )
• [user-scalable="no"] is used in the element or the [maximum-scale] attribute is less than 5
• Links to cross-origin destinations are unsafe
• Serves images with low resolution

Completion criteria:

• Warning is addressed/no longer triggered by Lighthouse

[JonellaCulmer]

PR merged, so closing.