HTML Validation

Bad value “false” for attribute “hidden” on element X.

About This HTML Issue

All HTML elements may have the hidden boolean attribute set. When specified on an element, it indicates that the element is not yet, or is no longer, relevant, so browsers won’t render it.

Boolean attributes don’t accept values, its presence represents the true value and its absence represents the false value.

<!-- This is invalid because the hidden attribute should not have a value set -->

<div hidden="false"></div>

<!-- The correct way to hide a div is like this -->

<div hidden>This will be hidden</div>

<!-- And to show the element, we just don't hide it -->

<div>This won't be hidden</div>

Learn more:

Last reviewed: October 27, 2022

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Reading time

1 min read

Category

HTML Validation

Engine

W3C Validator

Last reviewed

October 27, 2022

Resources

Related W3C Validator Issues

An “input” element with a “type” attribute whose value is “hidden” must not have an “autocomplete” attribute whose value is “on” or “off”.

The autocomplete attribute is used to control if the browser can provide assistance in filling out form field values, and it only makes sense for visible, not hidden, inputs.

It is available on <input> elements that take a text or numeric value as input, <textarea> elements, <select> elements, and <form> elements.

To fix this issue, you can remove the autocomplete attribute from the input element with type=hidden. Here is an example:

<!-- Wrong code -->

<input type="hidden" name="phone" value="12345" autcomplete="off">

<!-- Correct code -->

<input type="hidden" name="phone" value="12345">

An “input” element with a “type” attribute whose value is “hidden” must not have any “aria-*” attributes.

The aria-* attributes are part of the WAI-ARIA (Web Accessibility Initiative-Accessible Rich Internet Applications) suite. They are used to improve the accessibility of web pages. However, when we use an input element with a type attribute whose value is hidden, we imply that the element is invisible and has no interaction with the user. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense to add aria-* attributes to it.

To fix this issue, you need to remove the aria-* attributes from the input element with type=hidden. Here is an example:

<!-- Wrong code -->

<input type="hidden" name="referer" value="https://example.com" aria-invalid="false">

<!-- Correct code -->

<input type="hidden" name="referer" value="https://example.com">

The “aria-hidden” attribute must not be specified on an “input” element whose “type” attribute has the value “hidden”.

The aria-hidden attribute is redundat on an input of type hidden, so it should be removed.

Example:

<!-- Instead of this... -->

<input type="hidden" aria-hidden="true" id="month" value="10" />

<!-- You can just use this -->

<input type="hidden" id="month"  value="10" />

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