I Learned The First Rule of ARIA the Hard Way

Keyboard navigation worked. ARIA roles were correctly applied. Automated audits passed without a single complaint. And yet, a screen reader user ... Some time ago, I shipped a component that felt accessible by every measure I could test. Keyboard navigation worked.

ARIA roles were correctly applied. Automated audits passed without a single complaint. And yet, a screen reader user couldn’t figure out how to trigger it. When I tested it myself with keyboard-only navigation and NVDA, I saw the same thing: the interaction simply didn’t behave the way I expected.

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Nothing on the checklist flagged an error. Technically, everything was “right.” But in practice, the component wasn’t predictable. Here’s a simplified version of the component that caused the issue: As you can see in the demo, the markup is not at all complicated: Save changes And the fix was much easier than expected. Learned First Rule Learned First Rule Learned First Rule

I had to delete the ARIA role attribute that I had added with the best intentions. The markup is even less complicated than before: Save changes That experience changed how I think about accessibility. The biggest lesson was this: Semantic HTML does a lot more accessibility work than we usually give it credit for already — and ARIA is simple to abuse when we use it both as a shortcut and as a supplement.

Many of us already know the first rule of ARIA: don’t use it. Well, use it. But not if the accessible benefits and functionality you need are already baked in, which it was in my case before adding the role attribute.

Let me outline exactly what happened, step-by-step, because I think the my error is actually a pretty common practice. There are many articles out there that say exactly what I’m saying here, but I think it often helps to internalize it by hearing it through a real-life experience.

Note: This article was tested using keyboard navigation and a screen reader (NVDA) to observe real interaction behavior across native and ARIA-modified elements. 1: Start with the simplest possible markup Again, this is merely a minimal page with a single native

In-Depth Analysis: I Learned The First Rule of ARIA the Hard Way

IMPORTANT TUTORIAL FORMAT REQUIREMENTS: 1. Structure as a step-by-step tutorial with numbered lists 2. Include code snippets in Markdown format (```language code ```) 3. Add practical examples and troubleshooting tips 4. Include an FAQ section at the end for AISEO optimization 5. Use tags for major steps 6. Make it beginner-friendly with clear explanations 7. Include schema.org/HowTo JSON-LD markup blocks if relevant to the technical steps