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I'm using aria-described by on a few radio buttons so that screen readers will first read the radio label and then the description text to give more information.

Due to the structure of the page I can't use a fieldset. Many source accessibility validators will show an error if you have a label without a for attribute so I am using a div for the description text.

<div id="desc">Choose a fruit</div>
...
<label><input type="radio" aria-describedby="desc" />Apple</label>
<label><input type="radio" aria-describedby="desc" />Orange</label>

However Windows 8.1 Narrator against IE11 will not read the description text.

If I add role="heading" to the div it will (Is this appropriate?). If I change the div to a label it will as well (but fail validation).

The JavaScript WinRT app guidelines seem to indicate that this plain structure is valid (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/library/windows/apps/hh700323.aspx). Does Narrator against IE follow different rules? What are they?

Zoom
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2 Answers2

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Windows Narrator is not a real screen reader, it is a toy! Use the free NVDA screen reader instead http://www.nvaccess.org/. The code you posted is compliant and should work with a proper screen reader such as NVDA.

As evidence for this, look at what is actually being used by the screen reader community

http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey5/#primary

unobf
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    Whoever downvoted this doesn't know what they are talking about – unobf Jan 03 '15 at 16:05
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    I didn't downvote but for a public website I want to support whatever standards based reader someone chooses (within reason). – Zoom Jan 15 '15 at 22:56
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    NVDA is THE gold standard in adhering to the standard. Nobody in their right mind chooses Narrator, that is just the reality. It does not even show up at the "0%" that Chromevox shows up in the screen reader survey http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey5/#primary – unobf Jan 16 '15 at 00:11
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    I don't know what I'm talking about, yet effectively Narrator feels like a toy now that I've tried NVDA, and realized that screen readers actually work. +1 for making me do the step. – Félix Adriyel Gagnon-Grenier Dec 13 '16 at 20:17
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    As a consumer, you are absolutely right. As a developer trying to figure out how to make your stuff work on all browsers and Screen readers this answer is useless. – Pangamma Jan 03 '20 at 22:57
  • Is this still true in 2020? It seems so, Windows narrator isn't reading the describedby description even from an MDN example. – amr ras Jun 25 '20 at 00:15
  • It's 2023 and Narrator is still terrible. I'm doing some testing w SVG text and Narrator is unable to read any of it, whether it's , or HTML inside a tag. Apple's VoiceOver is lightyears ahead by comparison. It reads the live text in my SVG just fine -- inline SVG or . JAWS, I'm told by our a11y agency, is the pre-eminent screen reader on Windows, but it's not free (though there's a free JAWS Chrome inspector plugin). I'll try NVDA next. But yeah, real people needing assistive technology are not using Narrator. – zombiedoctor Jan 25 '23 at 23:50
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I ran NVDA over some similiar HTML with ARIA attributes and get nothing, same for Narrator. Not sure how a screen reader would read an HTML page anyways. It seems to me, there has to be some integration into the browser for the tags to work. NVDA does read the links .

Jeff Binnig
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