TYPO3 Core

What about code like the following:

<span class="btn btn-default disabled"><core:icon identifier="empty-empty" /></span>

Shouldn't this be a disabled button instead?

Found in typo3/sysext/form/Resources/Private/Templates/Backend/FormManager/Index.html

Lina Wolf wrote in #note-2:

What about code like the following:
[...]

Shouldn't this be a disabled button instead?

Found in typo3/sysext/form/Resources/Private/Templates/Backend/FormManager/Index.html

In general the user interface should not change for screen-reader announcements.
If there is a button in the UI, then there should still be a button there if it gets disabled (screenreader reads: "button disabled").

There is a special case for paginations:

[1][…][7][8][9][10][11][…][33]

Here I would say: no button for […] as this never becomes clickable.

E.g. see "84782: [BUGFIX] Make live search pagination accessible by keyboard" | https://review.typo3.org/c/Packages/TYPO3.CMS/+/84782

<span role="presentation" class="page-item"><span aria-hidden="true" class="page-link disabled">…</span></span>

If there is a case where […] is clickable, it must be a button with a proper (hidden) labeling:

Also see https://forge.typo3.org/issues/104796#note-4

<button type="button"><span aria-hidden="true">&hellip;</span><span class="visually-hidden">SOME LABEL</span></button>

<button type="button" aria-label="SOME LABEL"><span aria-hidden="true">&hellip;</span></button>

By using aria-label="" you can actually drop the aria-hidden="true" as the whole button-read-out is replaced by the given label and no text from inside the <button>-tag is announced anymore:

<button type="button" aria-label="SOME LABEL">&hellip;</button>