Why ARIA Landmarks Exist for Screen-Reader Users Specifically
A page has <nav>, <main>, and <footer> landmarks marked up
correctly. A sighted user never consciously notices them — but they
change how a screen-reader user moves through the page in an important
way.
What do landmarks let a screen-reader user do?
The correct answer is "Jump directly to a page region instead of tabbing through everything."
Landmarks mark out the major regions of a page specifically for screen-reader users: instead of tabbing linearly through every single link and element to get from the top of the page to the main content, a screen-reader user can jump directly by landmark — many screen readers expose a dedicated "rotor" or landmark-navigation shortcut for exactly this, the assistive-tech equivalent of a sighted user's glance-and-skip visual scanning.
Landmarks don't automatically skip decorative images — that's a
separate concern handled by empty alt="". They don't force focus into
a region on page load; navigation by landmark is user-initiated. They
have no effect on contrast at all — that's an unrelated visual property.
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