1. Accessibility
2. Performance

Adding an ARIA role overrides the native role semantics in the accessibility tree which is reported via the accessibility API, and therefore ARIA indirectly affects what is reported to a screen reader or other assistive technology.

<h1 role=button>text</h1>

Becomes button with a label of 'heading text'

alert

A type of live region with important, and usually time-sensitive, information. See related alertdialog and status.

alertdialog

A type of dialog that contains an alert message, where initial focus goes to an element within the dialog. See related alert and dialog.

application

A structure containing one or more focusable elements requiring user input, such as keyboard or gesture events, that do not follow a standard interaction pattern supported by a widget role.

article

A section of a page that consists of a composition that forms an independent part of a document, page, or site.

banner

A region that contains mostly site-oriented content, rather than page-specific content.

button

An input that allows for user-triggered actions when clicked or pressed. See related link.

cell

[ARIA 1.1] A cell in a tabular container.

checkbox

A checkable input that has three possible values: true, false, or mixed.

columnheader

A cell containing header information for a column.

combobox

A composite widget containing a single-line textbox and another element, such as a listbox or grid, that can dynamically pop up to help the user set the value of the textbox.

command

A form of widget that performs an action but does not receive input data.

complementary

A supporting section of the document, designed to be complementary to the main content at a similar level in the DOM hierarchy, but remains meaningful when separated from the main content.

composite

A widget that may contain navigable descendants or owned children.

contentinfo

A large perceivable region that contains information about the parent document.

definition

A definition of a term or concept. See related term.

dialog

A dialog is a descendant window of the primary window of a web application. For HTML pages, the primary application window is the entire web document, i.e., the body element.

directory

A list of references to members of a group, such as a static table of contents.

document

An element containing content that assistive technology users may want to browse in a reading mode.

feed

[ARIA 1.1] A scrollable list of articles where scrolling may cause articles to be added to or removed from either end of the list.

figure

[ARIA 1.1] A perceivable section of content that typically contains a graphical document, images, code snippets, or example text. The parts of a figure MAY be user-navigable.

form

A landmark region that contains a collection of items and objects that, as a whole, combine to create a form. See related search.

grid

A composite widget containing a collection of one or more rows with one or more cells where some or all cells in the grid are focusable by using methods of two-dimensional navigation, such as directional arrow keys.

gridcell

A cell in a grid or treegrid.

group

A set of user interface objects which are not intended to be included in a page summary or table of contents by assistive technologies.

heading

A heading for a section of the page.

img

A container for a collection of elements that form an image.

input

A generic type of widget that allows user input.

landmark

A perceivable section containing content that is relevant to a specific, author-specified purpose and sufficiently important that users will likely want to be able to navigate to the section easily and to have it listed in a summary of the page. Such a page summary could be generated dynamically by a user agent or assistive technology.

link

An interactive reference to an internal or external resource that, when activated, causes the user agent to navigate to that resource. See related button.

list

A section containing listitem elements. See related listbox.

listbox

A widget that allows the user to select one or more items from a list of choices. See related combobox and list.

listitem

A single item in a list or directory.

log

A type of live region where new information is added in meaningful order and old information may disappear. See related marquee.

main

The main content of a document.

marquee

A type of live region where non-essential information changes frequently. See related log.

math

Content that represents a mathematical expression.

menu

A type of widget that offers a list of choices to the user.

menubar

A presentation of menu that usually remains visible and is usually presented horizontally.

menuitem

An option in a set of choices contained by a menu or menubar.

menuitemcheckbox

A menuitem with a checkable state whose possible values are true, false, or mixed.

menuitemradio

A checkable menuitem in a set of elements with the same role, only one of which can be checked at a time.

navigation

A collection of navigational elements (usually links) for navigating the document or related documents.

none

[ARIA 1.1] An element whose implicit native role semantics will not be mapped to the accessibility API. See synonym presentation [ARIA 1.0].

note

A section whose content is parenthetic or ancillary to the main content of the resource.

option

A selectable item in a select list.

password

[ARIA 1.1] An input for entering a password.

presentation

An element whose implicit native role semantics will not be mapped to the accessibility API. See synonym none [ARIA 1.1].

progressbar

An element that displays the progress status for tasks that take a long time.

radio

A checkable input in a group of elements with the same role, only one of which can be checked at a time.

radiogroup

A group of radio buttons.

range

An input representing a range of values that can be set by the user.

region

A perceivable section containing content that is relevant to a specific, author-specified purpose and sufficiently important that users will likely want to be able to navigate to the section easily and to have it listed in a summary of the page. Such a page summary could be generated dynamically by a user agent or assistive technology.

roletype

The base role from which all other roles in this taxonomy inherit.

row

A row of cells in a tabular container.

rowgroup

A structure containing one or more row elements in a tabular container.

rowheader

A cell containing header information for a row in a grid.

scrollbar

A graphical object that controls the scrolling of content within a viewing area, regardless of whether the content is fully displayed within the viewing area.

search

A landmark region that contains a collection of items and objects that, as a whole, combine to create a search facility. See related form and searchbox.

searchbox

[ARIA 1.1] A type of textbox intended for specifying search criteria. See related textbox and search.

section

A renderable structural containment unit in a document or application.

sectionhead

A structure that labels or summarizes the topic of its related section.

select

A form widget that allows the user to make selections from a set of choices.

separator

A divider that separates and distinguishes sections of content or groups of menuitems.

slider

A user input where the user selects a value from within a given range.

spinbutton

A form of range that expects the user to select from among discrete choices.

status

A type of live region whose content is advisory information for the user but is not important enough to justify an alert, often but not necessarily presented as a status bar. See related alert.

structure

A document structural element.

switch

[ARIA 1.1] A type of checkbox that represents on/off values, as opposed to checked/unchecked values. See related checkbox.

tab

A grouping label providing a mechanism for selecting the tab content that is to be rendered to the user.

table

[ARIA 1.1] A section containing data arranged in rows and columns.

tablist

A list of tab elements, which are references to tabpanel elements.

tabpanel

A container for the resources associated with a tab, where each tab is contained in a tablist.

term

[ARIA 1.1] A word or phrase with a corresponding definition. See related definition.

text

[ARIA 1.1] An element whose entire subtree should be exposed to accessibility APIs as plain text.

textbox

A type of input that allows free-form text as its value.

timer

A type of live region containing a numerical counter which indicates an amount of elapsed time from a start point, or the time remaining until an end point.

toolbar

A collection of commonly used function buttons or controls represented in compact visual form.

tooltip

A contextual popup that displays a description for an element.

tree

A type of list that may contain sub-level nested groups that can be collapsed and expanded.

treegrid

A grid whose rows can be expanded and collapsed in the same manner as for a tree.

treeitem

An option item of a tree. This is an element within a tree that may be expanded or collapsed if it contains a sub-level group of tree item elements.

widget

An interactive component of a graphical user interface (GUI).

window

A browser or application window.

• aria-atomic
• aria-busy (state)
• aria-controls
• aria-current (state)
• aria-describedby
• aria-details
• aria-disabled (state)
• aria-dropeffect
• aria-errormessage
• aria-expanded (state)
• aria-flowto
• aria-grabbed (state)
• aria-haspopup
• aria-hidden (state)
• aria-invalid (state)
• aria-keyshortcuts
• aria-label
• aria-labelledby
• aria-live
• aria-modal
• aria-owns
• aria-relevant
• aria-roledescription

Managing focus is required. Has to be added with JavaScript

• combobox
• grid
• listbox
• menu
• menubar
• radiogroup
• tree
• treegrid
• tablist