Josh Montgomery WHICH screen readers? Name one! Even just one... JAWS sure as the blazes ignores it and that's the 500 pound gorilla in the room.

Much like the IDIOTIC pointless allegedly structural new tags from HTML 5 (section, article, nav, main, header, footer, aside) not ONE legitimate common use UA has done a damned thing with them, nor do we see ANY movement towards their implementation. WORSE, they are for the most part redundant to using the existing HTML 4 Strict tags CORRECTLY such as leveraging heading levels and horizontal rules to provide structure... no, instead people have to slop their numbered headings in any old way, making multiple h1 (gibberish), skipping heading levels (gibberish), and using the HTML in general to say what things should look like, not what they ARE.

It's pointless code bloat when nobody is implementing it AND it SHOULD BE redundant to existing markup and the bloody content itself!

But of course, proper semantics and content of value seem to be the LAST thing anyone developing websites right now cares about. It's all about how much shellac they can dump on a pile.

Sooner or later you have to let the content and semantics do what they exist to do, slopping more attributes in there is in most every case either a pointless redundancy or outright incompetence.

here are a few examples: zomigi.com/blog/videos-of-screen-readers-using-ar…

I should have said "designed to be widely used", I misspoke there and wasn't 100% clear. Either way, it's justified in its existence, and just because it's not being widely used right now doesn't mean it can't or won't be. I don't think the solution to "hey, let's make the web more accessible" is to take away a standard that's already been developed, but rather educate more and more people on it's benefits and why it should be used.

As for the rest of your rant, well, it didn't disappoint. But seriously dude, chill out. I appreciate your passion about writing good solid standards compliant code, but your passion makes you come off a bit aggressive, which'll, turn people off instead of listen to your message.

Those are GREAT examples -- of crap that has ZERO business on websites in the first damned place if you care about accessibility since they are walking zombie apocalypse WCAG VIOLATIONS! See the very first video with the scripttardery changing content -- aka providing ZERO scripting off graceful degradation and being a giant middle finger to users with accessibility needs; the TARGET AUDIENCE for accessibility additions!!!

Just look at the markup they were using in those demo's being riddled with crap we were told a decade ago to stop doing -- onevent attributes (don't exist under the CSP), dynamic scripttardery with no scripting off graceful degradation, gibberish HTML bordering on non-existent semantics -- and ALL Aria roles being added to the page seems to accomplish is to make it an even MORE confusing mess.

When people can't even be bothered to use H1..H6 and HR properly, much less the plethora of tags and attributes most of the mouth-breathers crapping out HTML 3.2 and slopping 4 tranny of 5 lip-service around seem to have never heard of (caption, fieldset, legend, label, th, thead, tfoot, tbody, scope, for, blockquote) and idiotic use of PRESENTATIONAL classes like the 100% grade A farm fresh manure squeezed out by "frameworks" like bootcrap -- throwing more stuff into the specification that people are just going to keep on using wrong isn't the bloody answer!

PARTICULARLY when it is the type of asshattery more likely to land you in lawsuits or federal fines depending on the nature of the site and region it is targeting. Admittedly my specialty right now is bailing companies out of accessibility violations when they are fined by governments or sued, and that's WHY this Aria role garbage just letting the scripttards THINK their ignorant trash can be made accessible is a bunch of bullshit.

As to "aggressive" I'm simply voicing disgust at some two decades of progress being undone by the people who failed to grasp the POINT of 4 strict, the reasons progressive enhancement and separation of presentation from content is so important, the most basic concepts of either version of the WCAG, and again the general incompetence and ignorance leading to bloated agonizing to maintain code and broken websites that tell users -- like me -- to go **** ourselves.

Particularly when this industry dominated by scam artists and two bit hucksters dupe ignorant fools into thinking that garbage like bootcrap, jquery, aria roles, HTML 5's new ALLEGED structural rules (proving the WhatWG didn't understand 4 strict and were therefore unqualified to create its successor), SCSS, LESS, SASS, etc, etc, etc actually does any of the things they promise like being "easier", "simpler" or making your "more productive".

Hardly a shock the most talented up and coming developers I know are all either dead at half my age, or walked away from the industry to flip burgers or mow lawns. Sane and rational development practices actually focused on what's REALLY important -- delivering content to users -- has no place in todays environment where polishing turds is the only thing the majority of "developers" -- or WORSE the PSD jockeys under the DELUSION that they are somehow magically "designers" -- have any interest in doing.

To that end, if a little harsh language and mansplaining is going to send the pansies running for their safe spaces, they can go right ahead and continue down the road to failure like all the other crack addict rhesus monkeys doing nothing more than blind copypasta and praying like second rate cultists that it works.

... the real laugh being this is the watered down version, and if that's "too harsh" I wonder just what in the hell type of wussy "safe zone" the twaddles getting their panties in a knot over a little adult language work in, as it's sure as shine-ola not a SERIOUS business with SERIOUS concerns or SERIOUS plans.

The false plastered on smiles, platitudes, and disingenuous "can't we all just be polite" BULL has always struck me as the type of sleazy "soft language" marketspeak that scam artists use to keep the masses plodding forward not questioning anything. It's the face you show the public and employees you are taking advantage of, and NOT how you actually handle a damned thing when ACTUALLY talking about doing things.

I don't trust a programmer that doesn't swear. I trust business owners who don't even less as more often than not it means they are bold faced lying RIGHT STRAIGHT INTO YOUR FACE!

... or aren't qualified to flap their gums on the bloody topic; again see all the halfwits, morons, and fools blindly singing the praises of garbage like bootcrap, react, angular, jQuery, etc, etc, etc. Making more work for themselves whilst claiming writing three to ten times the markup and zero scripting off plan was magically "easier" than writing the same amount of CSS (so much for caching models) all because they've bought into the cult-like echo-chamber mentality thanks to not knowing enough about HTML or CSS to even form a rational opinion on the subject!

Or as our true hero Gordon would put it, "This ***ing markup has so many ****ing classes it's pre-med!"