Web accessibility guidelines.
Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) is a set of attributes that define ways to make web content and web applications more accessible to people with disabilities. It supplements HTML so that interactions and widgets commonly used in applications can be passed to assistive technologies when there is not otherwise a mechanism. In this unit, we will delve into the understanding and implementation of ARIA roles and attributes.
ARIA stands for Accessible Rich Internet Applications. It is a specification published by the W3C and it specifies how to increase the accessibility of web pages, in particular, dynamic content and user interface components developed with JavaScript.
ARIA roles and properties help to make the web content and applications more accessible to people with disabilities. They provide additional semantics to help assistive technologies, such as screen readers, convey appropriate information to users.
ARIA roles provide information about what an element does. For example, a button role indicates that an element acts as a button. There are various types of roles, including:
ARIA attributes provide additional information about an element's state, properties, and relationship to other elements. For example, the aria-disabled
attribute indicates that an element is currently disabled. Some commonly used ARIA attributes include:
aria-checked
for checkboxes, or aria-expanded
for collapsible content.aria-required
for form inputs.aria-controls
, aria-labelledby
, and aria-owns
.When implementing ARIA roles and attributes, it's important to remember that they do not change the functionality of the element - they only provide extra information to assistive technologies. Here's an example of how you might use ARIA in a navigation menu:
<nav role="navigation"> <ul> <li><a href="#" aria-label="Home">Home</a></li> <li><a href="#" aria-label="About">About</a></li> <li><a href="#" aria-label="Contact">Contact</a></li> </ul> </nav>
In this example, the role="navigation"
attribute helps screen readers understand that this section of the page is a navigation menu. The aria-label
attribute provides a text description to any element, which can be read by screen readers.
By understanding and correctly implementing ARIA roles and attributes, you can make your web content more accessible and provide a better user experience for all users.