Buttons must have discernible text

Screen reader users are not able to discern the purpose of elements with role="link", role="button", or role="menuitem" that do not have an accessible name.

Fixing the problem

Correct markup solutions

The button-name rule has five markup patterns that pass test criteria: 

<button id="text">Name</button>  <button id="al" aria-label="Name"></button>  <button id="alb" aria-labelledby="labeldiv"></button>
<div id="labeldiv">Button label</div>  <button id="combo" aria-label="Aria Name">Name</button>  <button id="buttonTitle" title="Title"></button>

  1. Ensure that each button element and elements with role="button" have one of the following characteristics:

    • Inner text that is discernible to screen reader users.
    • Non-empty aria-label attribute.
    • aria-labelledby pointing to element with text which is discernible to screen reader users.
    • role="presentation" or role="none" (ARIA 1.1) and is not in tab order (tabindex="-1").

Incorrect markup solutions

The button-name rule has six markup patterns that fail testing criteria: 

<button id="empty"></button>  <button id="val" value="Button Name"></button>  <button id="alempty" aria-label=""></button>  <button id="albmissing" aria-labelledby="nonexistent"></button>  <button id="albempty" aria-labelledby="emptydiv"></button>
<div id="emptydiv"></div>  <button id="buttonvalue" value="foo" tabindex="-1"></button>

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axe-core is the leading open source digital accessibility toolkit.