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Relationship between WCAG and the ARIA in HTML specification

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From: Steve Green
Date: Aug 3, 2023 9:50AM

I am struggling to understand the relationship between WCAG and the ARIA in HTML specification at https://www.w3.org/TR/html-aria/. Do any non-conformances of this specification automatically result in non-conformance of any WCAG success criteria?

I can see how adding inappropriate ARIA attributes to HTML elements could violate WCAG SC 4.1.2 and maybe some other success criteria. However, it's the non-normative section 5 (Allowed descendants of ARIA roles) that I've got a problem with.

At the moment, invalid nesting such as <span role="button" tabindex="0">foo<a href="#">bar</a></span> violates the HTML specification and is a non-conformance of WCAG SC 4.1.1. However, SC 4.1.1 will be removed from WCAG 2.2.

That code is also a non-conformance of the ARIA in HTML specification, but it doesn't appear to translate into a WCAG non-conformance because:

a. It's not even normative under the ARIA in HTML specification.
b. Even if it was normative, which WCAG success criterion would it violate?

And before anyone says no one would write code like that, it's on a website I'm testing and it's actually quite common. I could probably say "just fix it", but I prefer to be able to explain exactly which WCAG success criterion is being violated and how.

Regards,
Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd
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