Usually, you can get a lot of accessibility “for free” if you try not to stray too far from how things are supposed to be used. The more you start getting clever and abusing components, the more likely your layout is impossible to navigate by screen readers and similar assistive software. My website makes heavy use of semantic tags, and doesn’t have an overly complex layout, so I think it does pretty well in a screen reader (though, I have not actually asked anyone to test this).
I think it does pretty well in a screen reader (though, I have not actually asked anyone to test this).
If you have access to a Mac, VoiceOver is built-in and supposed to be a pretty good screen reader, though it's not as popular as the expensive ones.
If you want to check for ARIA correctness, there are plugins for Chrome and Firefox that will check your pages and show you things you did right, and things you did wrong.
Some are better than others, however. And all the ones I've seen give false positives to perfectly valid conventions. But it's better than not knowing if you're making progress.
Yeah, I totally agree with this. Staying as semantic as possible is the best way to go. With some very judicial use of ARIA I think you can improve the experience a little.
