Landmark
What Is a Landmark?
A landmark is a marked-off region of a page that tells assistive technology what that part of the page is for: this is the navigation, this is the main content, this is the footer. A sighted visitor gets this instantly from layout, because a menu across the top looks like a menu. Someone using a screen reader has no layout to look at, so the page has to say it in code.
Why Landmarks Save Time
Without landmarks, reaching the actual content of a page means listening through the logo, the menu, the search box and the promotional banner, on every page, every time. With landmarks, a screen reader can list the regions and jump straight to the one the visitor wants. On a site with a large header, that is the difference between a few seconds and a minute of listening before the content starts.
The Common Regions
The regions used most often are banner for the site header, navigation for menus, main for the primary content, complementary for sidebars, contentinfo for the footer, search for a search facility, and form for a significant form. HTML elements such as header, nav, main and footer create most of these automatically, which is why plain semantic markup usually beats adding roles by hand.
How Landmarks Go Wrong
Three failures come up repeatedly. A page has no main region at all, so there is nothing to jump to. Everything is wrapped in landmarks, including decorative blocks, so the list is as long as the page and no longer useful. Or there are several navigation regions with no labels, and the visitor hears navigation, navigation, navigation with no way to tell the main menu from a list of footer links.
How It Affects Real Users
Consider someone applying for a job on your careers page using a screen reader. With a labeled main region they land, jump, and start reading the role. Without one, they arrive at the top of the page and listen to the entire header and cookie notice again on every posting they open. Nothing is broken in the sense of an error message, and the whole experience is still exhausting enough to make them give up.
Where Landmarks Show Up in an Accessibility Review
Reviewers check that a main region exists and is unique, that content sits inside a landmark rather than floating between them, and that repeated regions of the same type carry distinguishing labels. It is a structural finding rather than a visual one, so it never surfaces in a design review and almost always surfaces in an audit.