# The “aria-owns” attribute must point to an element in the same document. > Canonical HTML version: https://rocketvalidator.com/html-validation/the-aria-owns-attribute-must-point-to-an-element-in-the-same-document > Attribution: Rocket Validator (https://rocketvalidator.com) > License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) The `aria-owns` attribute is used to define parent-child relationships in the accessibility tree that aren't reflected in the DOM structure. For example, if a menu visually "owns" items that are placed elsewhere in the markup (perhaps for layout reasons), `aria-owns` tells assistive technologies that those elements should be treated as children of the owning element. The attribute accepts a space-separated list of one or more IDs. According to the [WAI-ARIA specification](https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/#aria-owns), each ID referenced by `aria-owns` must correspond to an element in the same document. If no matching element is found, the relationship is broken and the accessibility tree becomes inaccurate. This can confuse screen readers and other assistive technologies, potentially making parts of your page inaccessible or misrepresented to users who rely on them. **Common causes of this error:** - **Typos in the ID value** — a small misspelling like `aria-owns="drpdown-menu"` instead of `aria-owns="dropdown-menu"`. - **Referencing an element that doesn't exist** — the target element was removed or never added to the page. - **Referencing an element in a different document** — the target lives inside an `