From 0a1adf70946febc53f68c51b686e904f1f3cbb08 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Joost de Valk Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2026 08:10:44 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] fix(accessibility): Using ARIA is discontinued; cite ARIA in HTML REC W3C marked "Using ARIA" (/TR/using-aria/) a Discontinued Draft on 24 February 2026, and it lists four rules, not the five the page claimed. ARIA in HTML reached W3C Recommendation on 15 April 2026 and is the normative answer to which roles are allowed on which elements. - Swap the discontinued draft for the ARIA in HTML Recommendation. - Correct "five rules" to four; keep the accessible-name requirement, attributed to WCAG rather than to that list. - Add a short paragraph on the element-by-element conformance table. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) --- src/content/spec/accessibility/aria-usage.md | 17 ++++++++++------- 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-) diff --git a/src/content/spec/accessibility/aria-usage.md b/src/content/spec/accessibility/aria-usage.md index 4d79ca45..10732e82 100644 --- a/src/content/spec/accessibility/aria-usage.md +++ b/src/content/spec/accessibility/aria-usage.md @@ -7,14 +7,14 @@ status: recommended order: 80 appliesTo: [all] relatedSlugs: [semantic-html, form-labels, keyboard-navigation] -updated: "2026-05-29T09:13:20.000Z" +updated: "2026-07-31T00:00:00.000Z" sources: + - title: "ARIA in HTML (W3C Recommendation, 15 April 2026)" + url: "https://www.w3.org/TR/html-aria/" + publisher: "W3C" - title: "ARIA Authoring Practices Guide — Read Me First" url: "https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/practices/read-me-first/" publisher: "W3C WAI" - - title: "Using ARIA" - url: "https://www.w3.org/TR/using-aria/" - publisher: "W3C" - title: "MDN — ARIA" url: "https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA" publisher: "MDN" @@ -29,17 +29,20 @@ ARIA — Accessible Rich Internet Applications — is a set of HTML attributes ( ## Why it matters -ARIA is a sharp tool. Used well, it lets you describe widgets the HTML spec does not cover. Used badly, it overrides the real semantics of an element and makes the page *less* accessible than the unstyled HTML would have been. The W3C's own guide leads with five rules — and the first is the most important. +ARIA is a sharp tool. Used well, it lets you describe widgets the HTML spec does not cover. Used badly, it overrides the real semantics of an element and makes the page *less* accessible than the unstyled HTML would have been. The W3C's four rules of ARIA lead with the most important one: reach for native HTML first. + +Which roles and attributes are actually *allowed* on a given element is not a matter of taste either. [ARIA in HTML](https://www.w3.org/TR/html-aria/) became a W3C Recommendation in April 2026 and specifies it element by element. The answers are not always the intuitive ones: `role="button"` on an `` is permitted, while `