aria-label problem? Need Help

[David Ward]

Hey Folks,

I'm working on making an accessible UEB 2013 Rules Manual Available in HTML. I have example lines with SimBraille. SimBraille uses a special 64 character mapping, so for example "dd" is a period and the to contraction is number six; number sign is a pound symbol or hash. Anywho, I created a javascript routine that interprets these an assigns a friendly aria-label... Now I could have swore this worked in iOS last summer but now in every browser it doesn't work. so here's what my html looks like. A little snippet.

<p lang="en-AU" style="margin-left: 1.15in; text-indent: -0.4in; margin-top: 0.08in; margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">
Line 1:  
<font face="SimBraille, serif" aria-label="Description of Braille Dots. Cell 1 contains Letter A, Cell 2 contains a Blank or Space, Cell 3 contains Letter B, Cell 4 contains a Blank or Space, Cell 5 contains Letter C, Cell 6 contains a Blank or Space, Cell 7 contains Letter D, Cell 8 contains a Blank or Space, Cell 9 contains Letter E, Cell 10 contains a Blank or Space, Cell 11 contains Letter F, Cell 12 contains a Blank or Space, Cell 13 contains Letter G, Cell 14 contains a Blank or Space, Cell 15 contains Letter H, Cell 16 contains a Blank or Space, Cell 17 contains Letter I, Cell 18 contains a Blank or Space, Cell 19 contains Letter J">
<font size="5" style="font-size: 18pt">a b c d e f g h i j</font></font>
</p>

So at this point the aria-label tag isn't being read at all just the line with SimBraille. Even thought its all nested under this <p> tag. I can add aria-hidden to the <font> tag containing the SimBraille it will all work. But that might require some Javascript ninja skills outside my skill set. So I'm looking for a way to implement the aria-label or a similar properties that effectively does both; Its says this is the label ignore anything else nested within here.

So I could use a hand... or ideas??

-David

ps- By the way I'm going to make this javascript freely available under the MIT license. If anybody needs a link to the live examples let me know. I also attached the javascript file and test file.