Form elements must have labels

ARIA role values must be assigned valid values. Role values must be appropriately written, correlate to existing ARIA role values, and not be abstract roles in order to correctly display the element’s purpose.

Assistive technologies do not read elements with erroneous ARIA role values as intended by the developer.

When screen readers and other assistive devices do not know the function of each element on a web page, they are unable to interact with or communicate the function to the user. When a role value is invalid, an element’s characteristics, properties, and ways of transmitting information to and/or from the user can be communicated via assistive technologies.

What this Accessibility Rule Checks

Examines each element containing the WAI-ARIA role property to check that its value is valid.

A label element with a programmatic association must be included for each select element.

To make forms accessible, they must have clear form labels. Even if a form element isn’t programmatically named, sighted users can usually tell what it’s for when they see checkboxes, radio buttons, input fields, etc. To identify form fields, screen reader users need clear form labels. All form elements should have labels to remove confusion and make the product more accessible.

Screen reader users are in the dark about the expected input data when form elements lack labels. Without a defined label connection (or redundant text acting as a label), screen readers cannot automatically determine information about input items.

What this Accessibility Rule Checks

ensures that each select element has a label that is associated with it programmatically.

An image map consists of a single image with numerous clickable sections. Because screen readers cannot translate graphics into text, an image map, like all images, must contain alternate text for each of the distinct clickable parts, as well as for the larger image itself.

In the absence of alternate text, screen readers often announce the image’s filename. Filenames do not accurately describe images and are therefore inconvenient for screen reader users.

What this Accessibility Rule Checks

Ensures that image map area elements have alternate text.

Not all ARIA role-attribute combinations are valid. This rule ensures that each role has the required qualities.

Using ARIA attributes in roles where they are not permitted can impair web page accessibility. Using an improper role-attribute combination will have no effect on application accessibility at best and may trigger behavior that blocks accessibility for entire areas of an application at worst.

When ARIA attributes are used on HTML elements that do not conform to WAI-ARIA 1.1, they interfere with the semantics of the elements, causing assistive technology products to display nonsensical user interface (UI) information that does not represent the document’s true UI.

What this Accessibility Rule Checks

Checks that each element with an ARIA role is using only the ARIA attributes that are permitted for that role.

This rule determines whether or not aria-hidden elements contain focusable elements.

Using the property aria-hidden="true" on an element removes the element and all of its child nodes from the accessibility API, rendering the element fully unavailable to screen readers and other assistive technology.

aria-hidden may be used with extreme discretion to hide visibly displayed content from assistive technologies if the act of hiding this content is meant to enhance the experience of assistive technology users by reducing redundant or superfluous content.

If aria-hidden is employed to hide material from screen readers, the same or equal meaning and functionality must be made available to assistive technologies.

Using aria-hidden="false" on content that is a descendant of an element that is hidden using aria-hidden="true" will not reveal that content to the accessibility API, nor will it be accessible to screen readers or other assistive technology.

The rule applies to any element whose aria-hidden attribute value is true.

By adding aria-hidden="true" to an element, authors assure that assistive technologies will disregard the element. This can be used to hide aesthetic elements, such as icon typefaces, that are not intended to be read by assistive technologies.

A focusable element with aria-hidden="true" is disregarded as part of the reading order, but is still part of the focus order, making it unclear if it is visible or hidden.

What this Accessibility Rule Checks

For all user interface components, including form elements, links, and script-generated components, the name and role can be identified programmatically; user-specified states, properties, and values can be set programmatically; and user agents, including assistive technologies, are notified of changes.