HTML Validation

The “aria-hidden” attribute must not be specified on the “link” element.

About This HTML Issue

The aria-hidden attribute is not allowed on the link element according to HTML and ARIA specifications.

aria-hidden is a global ARIA attribute used to hide elements from assistive technologies such as screen readers. However, it is not permitted on some elements, including the link element, because link is a void element intended for non-visible resources like stylesheets and icons.

Incorrect usage:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" aria-hidden="true">

Correct usage (simply remove aria-hidden):

<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">

If your intent is to control screen reader visibility, apply aria-hidden to visible content elements like <div>, <span>, or <img>—not to metadata elements such as <link>.

Learn more:

Last reviewed: May 05, 2025

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Reading time

1 min read

Category

HTML Validation

Engine

W3C Validator

Last reviewed

May 05, 2025

Resources

Related W3C Validator Issues

Bad value “"true"” for attribute “aria-hidden” on element “div”.

The attribute aria-hidden must have a value of "true" (without extra quotes) or "false", not "\"true\"" (with double quotes inside the value).

The aria-hidden attribute is used to indicate whether an element and its children should be accessible to assistive technologies (like screen readers). Valid values are the strings "true" or "false" (without embedded quotation marks). Using extra quotation marks causes the validator to flag a bad value because the attribute’s value is interpreted literally.

Incorrect Example:

<div aria-hidden='"true"'>This is hidden from assistive tech</div>

Correct Example:

<div aria-hidden="true">This is hidden from assistive tech</div>

<div aria-hidden="false">This is visible to assistive tech</div>

Remove any extra quotation marks around your attribute value to resolve the error.

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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