I have a creepy site I'm using just to learn better HTML and CSS practices, and now I'm trying to learn and apply accessibility to it (just practicing, I'm not really expecting any person with a visual impairment to visit it), but using online screenreaders... well, I thought I was following the guides correctly but nothing is working as I expected...
The site is designed to look like entry logs on a terminal, all starting with // and I have a typing animation changing stuff written on the first line. I created a generic inline element called sr just for screenreader-related stuff, and in here: <h3 class="msg1"><sr aria-hidden="true">//</sr> You are the first here.</h3><h3 class="msg2"><sr aria-hidden="true">//</sr> Have you been kind to yourself?</h3> where I tested it seemed to work to remove the "slash slash" from every sentence, since the // is merely a visual element, however... well...
main content are entries following this pattern: "// 202603221035 : text text", and these are time stamps, I tried to add aria-label so it doesn't read as "slash slash two zero two six ... colon", so first I tried:
<p><time datetime="2026-03-22T10:35-03:00" aria-label="March 22, 2026 at 10:35">// 202603221035 :</time> text text </p>
Didn't work, aria-label was ignored and it read the "slash slash two zero two...". I asked an LLM and it suggested because it was a semantic element it would have tried to read datetime but it also didn't, but I tried removing it from the semantic element anyway:
<p><time datetime="2026-03-22T10:35-03:00"><sr aria-label="March 22, 2026 at 10:35">// 202603221035 :</sr></time> text text </p>
<p><sr aria-label="March 22, 2026 at 10:35"><time datetime="2026-03-22T10:35-03:00" aria-label="March 22, 2026 at 10:35">// 202603221035 :</time></sr> text text </p>
also got ignored, and LLM suggested it was because it was a custom/non-semantic generic element, but same reader (from https://www.screenreadersimulator.com/) respected the aria-hidden before on the same element so it wasn't the case... anyway, what would be the best accessibility practice for this case? Thanks.
It's hard when the USA send lobbyists and pays a bunch of people in high places to cancel local projects and convince others that it's a waste of money and time to developed technology since they can buy it from the USA.