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Proposed ARIA required accessible name

Description

This rule checks that WAI-ARIA accessible name is available when required.

Applicability

This rule applies to any HTML or SVG element that is included in the accessibility tree and has a semantic role that has the “Accessible Name Required: True” characteristic, unless the element has a explicit presentational role.

Accessibility Requirements Mapping

Secondary Requirements

This rule is related to the following accessibility requirements, but was not designed to test this requirements directly. These secondary requirements can either be stricter than the rule requires, or may be satisfied in ways not tested by the rule:

Input Aspects

The following aspects are required in using this rule.

Test Cases

Passed

Passed Example 1

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This button element with an implicit semantic role of button has an accessible name provided by its content.

<button>Submit</button>

Passed Example 2

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The div element with role button has an accessible name provided by its content.

<div role="button" tabindex="0">Submit</div>

Passed Example 3

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The div element with role img has an accessible name provided by the aria-label attribute value.

<div role="img" aria-label="Rating: 5 out of 5 stars">
  <span aria-hidden="true">★★★★★</span>
</div>

Passed Example 4

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The div element with role checkbox has an accessible name provided thanks to the aria-labelledby attribute.

<div role="checkbox" aria-checked="false" tabindex="0" aria-labelledby="pass-agree-tc"></div>
<div id="pass-agree-tc">I agree with terms and conditions</div>

Passed Example 5

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The div element with role heading has an accessible name provided by its content.

  <div role="heading" aria-level="1">Terms</div>

Passed Example 6

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This div element with role heading is not [visible][], but is still included in the accessibility tree. It has a non-empty accessible name provided by its content.

<div role="heading" aria-level="1" style="position: absolute; left: -9999px">ACT rules</div>

Passed Example 7

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The div element with role link has an accessible name provided by its content.

<div role="link" tabindex="0" onclick="location.href='https://act-rules.github.io/'">ACT Rules</div>

Failed

Failed Example 1

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The div element with role button doesn’t have an accessible name.

<div role="button"></div>

Failed Example 2

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This button element with an implicit semantic role of button doesn’t have an accessible name.

<button></button>

Failed Example 3

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The div element with role img doesn’t have an accessible name.

<div role="img">
  <span aria-hidden="true">★★★★★</span>
</div>

Failed Example 4

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The div element with role checkbox doesn’t have an accessible name.

<div role="checkbox" aria-checked="false" tabindex="0"></div>
<div>I agree with terms and conditions</div>

Failed Example 5

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The div element with role heading has an empty accessible name due to the display: none CSS property set to its content.

  <div role="heading" aria-level="1"><span style="display: none">Terms</span></div>

Failed Example 6

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The div element with role button has an empty accessible name because the value attribute does not count in the computation of the accessible name.

<div role="button" value="test"></div>

Failed Example 7

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This div element with role button is not [visible][], but is still included in the accessibility tree. It doesn’t have an accessible name, therefore failing the rule.

<div role="button" style="position: absolute; left: -9999px" tabindex="0"></div>

Failed Example 8

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The div element with role link has an empty accessible name.

<div role="link" tabindex="0" onclick="location.href='https://act-rules.github.io/'"></div>

Inapplicable

Inapplicable Example 1

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This div element is not included in the accessibility tree, hence its semantic role is not relevant.

<div role="button" style="display:none;"></div>

Inapplicable Example 2

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This div element has an semantic role of group, which does not require an accessible name.

<div role="group">Some content</div>

Inapplicable Example 3

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This button element has an explicit semantic role of none, leading to a conflict resolved by Presentational Roles Conflict Resolution, which is not covered by this rule.

<button role="none">submit</button>

Glossary

Accessible Name

The accessible name is the programmatically determined name of a user interface element that is included in the accessibility tree.

The accessible name is calculated using the accessible name and description computation.

For native markup languages, such as HTML and SVG, additional information on how to calculate the accessible name can be found in HTML Accessibility API Mappings 1.0, Accessible Name and Description Computation (working draft) and SVG Accessibility API Mappings, Name and Description (working draft).

For more details, see examples of accessible name.

Note: As per the accessible name and description computation, each element always has an accessible name. When no accessible name is provided, the element will nonetheless be assigned an empty ("") one.

Note: As per the accessible name and description computation, accessible names are flat string trimmed of leading and trailing whitespace. Notably, it is not possible for a non-empty accessible name to be composed only of whitespace since these must be trimmed.

Attribute value

The attribute value of a content attribute set on an HTML element is the value that the attribute gets after being parsed and computed according to specifications. It may differ from the value that is actually written in the HTML code due to trimming whitespace or non-digits characters, default values, or case-insensitivity.

Some notable case of attribute value, among others:

This list is not exhaustive, and only serves as an illustration for some of the most common cases.

The attribute value of an IDL attribute is the value returned on getting it. Note that when an IDL attribute reflects a content attribute, they have the same attribute value.

Explicit Semantic Role

The explicit semantic role of an element is determined by its role attribute (if any).

The role attribute takes a list of tokens. The explicit semantic role is the first valid role in this list. The valid roles are all non-abstract roles from WAI-ARIA Specifications. If the element has no role attribute, or if it has one with no valid role, then this element has no explicit semantic role.

Other roles may be added as they become available. Not all roles will be supported in all assistive technologies. Testers are encouraged to adjust which roles are allowed according to the accessibility support base line. For the purposes of executing test cases in all rules, it should be assumed that all roles are supported by assistive technologies so that none of the roles fail due to lack of accessibility support.

Focusable

An element is focusable if one or both of the following are true:

Exception: Elements that lose focus and do not regain focus during a period of up to 1 second after gaining focus, without the user interacting with the page the element is on, are not considered focusable.

Notes:

Implicit Semantic Role

The implicit semantic role of an element is a pre-defined value given by the host language which depends on the element and its ancestors.

Implicit roles for HTML and SVG, are documented in the HTML accessibility API mappings (working draft) and the SVG accessibility API mappings (working draft).

Included in the accessibility tree

Elements included in the accessibility tree of platform specific accessibility APIs are exposed to assistive technologies. This allows users of assistive technology to access the elements in a way that meets the requirements of the individual user.

The general rules for when elements are included in the accessibility tree are defined in the core accessibility API mappings. For native markup languages, such as HTML and SVG, additional rules for when elements are included in the accessibility tree can be found in the HTML accessibility API mappings (working draft) and the SVG accessibility API mappings (working draft).

For more details, see examples of included in the accessibility tree.

Programmatically hidden elements are removed from the accessibility tree. However, some browsers will leave focusable elements with an aria-hidden attribute set to true in the accessibility tree. Because they are hidden, these elements are considered not included in the accessibility tree. This may cause confusion for users of assistive technologies because they may still be able to interact with these focusable elements using sequential keyboard navigation, even though the element should not be included in the accessibility tree.

Marked as decorative

An element is marked as decorative if one or more of the following conditions is true:

Elements are marked as decorative as a way to convey the intention of the author that they are pure decoration. It is different from the element actually being pure decoration as authors may make mistakes. It is different from the element being effectively ignored by assistive technologies as rules such as presentational roles conflict resolution may overwrite this intention.

Elements can also be ignored by assistive technologies if they are programmatically hidden. This is different from marking the element as decorative and does not convey the same intention. Notably, being programmatically hidden may change as users interact with the page (showing and hiding elements) while being marked as decorative should stay the same through all states of the page.

Namespaced Element

An element with a specific namespaceURI value from HTML namespaces. For example an “SVG element” is any element with the “SVG namespace”, which is http://www.w3.org/2000/svg.

Namespaced elements are not limited to elements described in a specification. They also include custom elements. Elements such as a and title have a different namespace depending on where they are used. For example a title in an HTML page usually has the HTML namespace. When used in an svg element, a title element has the SVG namespace instead.

Outcome

A conclusion that comes from evaluating an ACT Rule on a test subject or one of its constituent test target. An outcome can be one of the five following types:

Note: A rule has one passed or failed outcome for every test target. When a tester evaluates a test target it can also be reported as cantTell if the rule cannot be tested in its entirety. For example, when applicability was automated, but the expectations have to be evaluated manually.

When there are no test targets the rule has one inapplicable outcome. If the tester is unable to determine whether there are test targets there will be one cantTell outcome. And when no evaluation has occurred the test target has one untested outcome. This means that each test subject always has one or more outcomes.

Outcomes used in ACT Rules can be expressed using the outcome property of the EARL10-Schema.

Programmatically Hidden

An HTML element is programmatically hidden if either it has a computed CSS property visibility whose value is not visible; or at least one of the following is true for any of its inclusive ancestors in the flat tree:

Note: Contrary to the other conditions, the visibility CSS property may be reverted by descendants.

Note: The HTML standard suggests setting the CSS display property to none for elements with the hidden attribute. While not required by HTML, all modern browsers follow this suggestion. Because of this the hidden attribute is not used in this definition. In browsers that use this suggestion, overriding the CSS display property can reveal elements with the hidden attribute.

Semantic Role

The semantic role of an element is determined by the first of these cases that applies:

  1. Conflict If the element is marked as decorative, but the element is included in the accessibility tree; or would be included in the accessibility tree when it is not programmatically hidden, then its semantic role is its implicit role.
  2. Explicit If the element has an explicit role, then its semantic role is its explicit role.
  3. Implicit The semantic role of the element is its implicit role.

This definition can be used in expressions such as “semantic button” meaning any element with a semantic role of button.

WAI-ARIA specifications

The WAI ARIA Specifications group both the WAI ARIA W3C Recommendation and ARIA modules, namely:

Note: depending on the type of content being evaluated, part of the specifications might be irrelevant and should be ignored.

Rule Versions

This is the first version of this ACT rule.

Implementations

There are currently no known implementations for this rule. If you would like to contribute an implementation, please read the ACT Implementations page for details.

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This is an unpublished draft preview that might include content that is not yet approved. The published website is at w3.org/WAI/.