WAI ARIA 1.1 New Roles, states and properties

In last few years Maxability have published several articles on each WAI ARIA 1.0 roles, states and properties. W3C WAI ARIA Working Group have published a latest Candidate Recommendation on October 27, 2016. According to this candidate recommendation of WAI ARIA 1.1, new roles, states and properties are introduced. In addition the values of some properties are enhanced to meet the needs of more complex widgets. On the other hand efforts are put to enhance the mapping of land mark roles such as role=”form” to behave as a HTML form element which wasn’t mapped in WAI ARIA 1.0.

New Roles in WAI ARIA 1.1

The following new roles are introduced in WAI ARIA 1.1. Detailed explanation of each role will be published as different articles in coming months.

• role=”cell”: A cell in a tabular container.
• role=”feed”: A scrollable list of articles where scrolling may cause articles to be added to or removed from either end of the list.
• role=”figure”: A perceivable section of content that typically contains a graphical document, images, code snippets, or example text.
• role=”none”: An element whose implicit native role semantics will not be mapped to the accessibility API.
• role=”searchbox”: A type of textbox intended for specifying search criteria.
• role=”switch”: A type of checkbox that represents on/off values, as opposed to checked/unchecked values.
• role=”table”: A section containing data arranged in rows and columns.
• role=”term”: The term role is used to explicitly identify a word or phrase for which a definition has been provided by the author or is expected to be provided by the user.

New States and properties in WAI ARIA 1.1

The following new states and properties are introduced in WAI ARIA 1.1. Detailed explanation of each state or property will be published as different articles in coming months.

• aria-colcount (property): Defines the total number of columns in a table, grid, or treegrid.
• aria-colindex (property): Defines an element’s column index or position with respect to the total number of columns within a table, grid, or treegrid.
• aria-colspan (property): Defines the number of columns spanned by a cell or gridcell within a table, grid, or treegrid.
• aria-current (state): Indicates the element that represents the current item within a container or set of related elements.
• aria-details (property): Identifies the element that provides a detailed, extended description for the object.
• aria-errormessage (property): Identifies the element that provides an error message for the object.
• aria-keyshortcuts (property): Indicates keyboard shortcuts that an author has implemented to activate or give focus to an element.
• aria-modal (property): Indicates whether an element is modal when displayed.
  • aria-placeholder (property): Defines a short hint (a word or short phrase) intended to aid the user with data entry when the control has no value. A hint could be a sample value or a brief description of the expected format.
• aria-roledescription (property): Defines a human-readable, author-localized description for the role of an element.
• Aaia-rowcount (property): Defines the total number of rows in a table, grid, or treegrid.
• aria-rowindex (property): Defines an element’s row index or position with respect to the total number of rows within a table, grid, or treegrid.
• aria-rowspan (property): Defines the number of rows spanned by a cell or gridcell within a table, grid, or treegrid.

This article will be updated if the final WAI ARIA 1.1 spec makes any changes.