I think a better approach for this one would be to wrap the entire card inside of an anchor element.

We would have to add an <a role="link"> around the contents of each card, though. Isn't it a bit more concise to just add the role-link to the md-card itself?

In general it's always better to use the appropriate native element instead of a role. An <a> also has the proper associated href and tab index.

I'm wondering if we should avoid having <nav> inside of a role="navigation" and instead wrap the entire sidenav content in one <nav>

I don't think that this is necessarily a problem. To my knowledge, a <nav> element or an element with role="navigation" just cannot have a <main> or role="main" as a descendant. Adding the role navigation here to allow screen readers to see the whole side nav, and then dig down into the individual sections of the side nav was suggested based off this issue: #111

A more informative aria-label might be "Component navigation"

The roles and other aria attributes are something that really belong as part of the md-tab-group implementation

Should be prefixed as .docs-guide-container

It's somewhat redundant for this to say "Navigation components" since they're all components. Could it perhaps just be done as an aria label?

Ah, I just added "Components" to it since the screen reader otherwise reads it as "Navigation navigation". I'll see if we can change it to an aria label instead. 👍

role="button" should never be necessary on a <button> element

(here and elsewhere)

This seems like a very risky change to make; generally having an element grab focus to itself without user input can cause problems. I'll try to look into alternate approaches

We mostly just need to find a way to signify that the page has changed after a user navigates with a screen reader. At the moment, there is no indication that anything has happened. It was recommended that we focus a heading in the main content area of the page, though I definitely agree that it does feel like there should be a better way to signify this.

@riavalon have you tried setting a document title? I would expect a screen reader to notice and announce a change in the title. Have a look here: https://angular.io/docs/ts/latest/cookbook/set-document-title.html
Can you see if this is a better solution?

I actually tried this already, @naomiblack. Even with a title change the screen reader does not announce anything else. Though, updating the document title during navigation seems like a good thing to have anyway. I can add that back in.

that is definitely weird. I'll see if I can get some help on this one -- yes -- please do add a document title change back in.

I'm not sure role="navigation" should be necessary for a <nav> element

role="link" shouldn't be necessary for an <a> element