Use aria-roledescription on elements with a semantic role

Inappropriate aria-roledescription attribute values that conflict with an element's implied or explicit role value can interfere with the accessibility of the web page. A conflicting aria-roledescription attribute value may result in no effect on the accessibility of the application and may trigger behavior that disables accessibility for entire portions of an application.

When aria-roledescription> attributes are applied to HTML elements not in accordance with WAI-ARIA 1.1, semantics conflict between the aria-roledescription value and the implicit or explicit element role value which may result in assistive technology products reporting nonsensical user interface (UI) information that does not correctly represent the intended UI experience.

Fixing the problem

ARIA explicitly defines which attributes are allowed for any given role and for every attribute, where that attribute may be used. The detailed information on each attribute can be found by looking at the documentation for each role and/or each attribute.

The aria-roledescription rule includes two failing conditions, three passing conditions, and two incomplete conditions.

aria-roledescription failing conditions:

aria-roledescription returns false for elements with no role value on elements where a role value should be specified.

• <p aria-roledescription="my paragraph"
                      id="fail1">paragraph</p>

• <div aria-roledescription="my div" id="fail2">div</div>

aria-roledescription passing conditions:

• aria-roledescription returns true for elements with an explicitly supported role.
• aria-roledescription returns true for elements with an implicitly supported role.

1. <img aria-roledescription="my img" src="foo.png" id="pass1" />

2. <button aria-roledescription="my button" id="pass2">button</button>

3. <div role="combobox" aria-roledescription="my combobox" id="pass3"></div>

aria-roledescription incomplete conditions:

aria-roledescription returns undefined for elements with an unsupported role.

1. <h1 aria-roledescription="my heading" id="incomplete1">heading</h1>

2. <div role="rowgroup" aria-roledescription="my row" id="incomplete2"></div>