Landmark Region

Why It Matters

Landmarks are one of the ways to satisfy success criterion 2.4.1 Bypass Blocks at Level A, which exists because repeating a forty-link sidebar at the top of every page is a real cost when you hear it rather than see it. At roughly two seconds a link, that is over a minute before the content starts, on every page view. With a main landmark, the same user presses one key. Landmarks also fail quietly in the other direction: a page with six nav elements and no labels produces a list reading 'navigation, navigation, navigation', which is no more useful than none. Getting them right is a handful of elements and two or three attributes.

How It Works

Use one main element per page and wrap the primary content in it, excluding the header, the site navigation and the footer. Where a page has more than one navigation region, give each a distinguishing name with aria-label, such as 'Primary' or 'Related articles'. Do not include the word navigation or region in those names, because the role is announced separately and the user would hear it twice. banner and contentinfo apply only when header and footer are top-level, not when they sit inside an article. Anything not inside a landmark is orphaned from that list, so aim for every visible block of content to fall within one. A skip link and a set of landmarks solve overlapping problems and are usually both worth having.

Real-World Example

Common Mistakes

• ✕Using more than one main element on a page — the role loses its meaning and screen readers report an ambiguous structure
• ✕Leaving several nav elements unnamed — the landmark list reads as a row of identical entries, so nobody can tell the site menu from the pagination
• ✕Naming a landmark 'Main navigation section' — the role is already spoken, so the listener hears the word navigation twice in a row

Related Terms