WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Does providing null ("") for Role, Name, id break Accessibility in any way ?

for

From: tim.harshbarger@deque.com
Date: Jul 31, 2023 8:09AM

You may want to patch your framework so that it only adds the id, role, and name attributes when they are not null.

The thing with invalid markup like this is that it might work OK today. It might always work OK. However, since it is invalid markup, there is no guarantee that it will continue to work. And by the time you notice it is no longer working, the issue will be everywhere and cause a lot of people major headaches.

If it is a possibility, you might want to add a fix for this on the road map of whatever framework you might be using or whatever code is generating this.

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2023 3:32 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Does providing null ("") for Role, Name, id break Accessibility in any way ?

ARIA does not allow for an empty role attribute value, that's invalid markup.
At best, and fortunately this appears to be the case, it's ignored by browsers/screen readers.
At worst this would remove the native role attribute from the elements where they are present, e.g. buttons/links/headings etc.
This is invalid markup, and I have a hard time seeing why you'd want it on the page (a role attribute without a pre-determined value that is).
Again, if you can verify through testing with a sufficient combinations of screen readers and browsers that this does not impact the user experience you can justify keeping it, but I'd definitely see if there could be ways to do it differently.


On 7/29/23, jp Jamous < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> While everything is working good, I would fail this if I was testing a page.
> Also, automated tools would fail it.
>
> The ID may not be the biggest concern, but the Role would be. It would
> fail Role, Name Value.
>
> I prefer to have values for all of those by default, then the script
> can change them when the JS execute. Nothing wrong with this approach.
> However, leaving them empty is bad markup and would fail 1.4.2.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of
> allyssa jessicon
> Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2023 2:40 PM
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Subject: [WebAIM] Does providing null ("") for Role, Name, id break
> Accessibility in any way ?
>
> Hello list,
>
> We have a piece of code where id="" , role="" and name="" (all null)
> used in many scenarios for various reasons, running automated scripts
> for the page containing the code resulting in failure with the message
> "Element does not have inner text that is visible to screen readers".
> Is this a cause of concern for Accessibility? The controls work just
> fine with all major screen readers though.
>
> Appreciate your response.
>
>
> Thanks.
> > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> > > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> >


--
Work hard. Have fun. Make history.