aria-label/labelledby is not always a workable solution. Sometimes you really need the text to be sitting there on the page as text for things to work right.

Note that the very SO thread you linked to goes immediately to doing position/clipping tricks right after mentioning aria-label.

In addition, aria labels don't work reliably with some HTML elements [1]. Specifically, the example from SO (div) will not work in some screen readers.

[1] https://www.tpgi.com/short-note-on-aria-label-aria-labelledb...