WAI-ARIA (Wikipedia)
An encyclopedia article on WAI-ARIA, one of the five specification families produced by Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) (already covered for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) specifically via two earlier Wikipedia sources). Wikipedia articles are continuously edited, so year above reflects the access date (2026-06-24), not a fixed publication year.
License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Key points
- Solves a real gap: custom JavaScript-driven controls and partial-page content updates (“rich Internet applications”) have no native HTML vocabulary, so screen readers and other assistive technology can’t tell what a custom widget is or how its state just changed without extra metadata.
- Adds that metadata as roles, properties, and states, which feed the accessibility tree assistive technology actually reads.
- The Five Rules of ARIA: prefer native HTML semantics over ARIA when possible; don’t override native semantics without good reason; keep all interactive ARIA controls keyboard-usable; don’t strip semantics or hide focusable elements; give every interactive element an accessible name.
- Version history: work began 2006 (first published September 26, 2006); WAI-ARIA 1.0 became a W3C Recommendation March 20, 2014; 1.1 followed December 14, 2017; 1.2 reached Recommendation status June 6, 2023.