Introduction
WAI-ARIA, the Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite, defines a way to
make Web content and Web applications more accessible to people with
disabilities.
It especially helps with dynamic content and advanced user interface controls
developed with Ajax, HTML, JavaScript, and related technologies. Currently
certain functionality used in Web sites is not available to some users with
disabilities, especially people who rely on screen readers and people who cannot
use a mouse. WAI-ARIA addresses these accessibility challenges, for example, by
defining new ways for functionality to be provided to assistive technology.
With WAI-ARIA, developers can make advanced Web applications accessible and
usable to people with disabilities.
This page describes the problems that WAI-ARIA addresses, and introduces the
WAI-ARIA suite of technical documents.
Making Ajax and Related Technologies Accessible
Figure 1: Tree control
Web sites are increasingly using more advanced and complex user interface
controls, such as tree controls for Web site navigation like the example in
Figure
1. To provide an accessible user experience to people with disabilities,
assistive technologies need to be able to interact with these controls. However,
the information that the assistive technologies need is not available with most
current Web technologies.
Another example of an accessibility barrier is drag-and-drop functionality that
is not available to users who use a keyboard only and cannot use a mouse.
Even relatively simple Web sites can be difficult if they require an extensive
amount of keystrokes to navigate with only a keyboard.
Many Web applications developed with Ajax (also known as AJAX), DHTML, and
other technologies pose additional accessibility challenges. For example, if
the content of a Web page changes in response to user actions or time- or
event-based updates, that new content may not be available to some people, such
as people who are blind or people with cognitive disabilities who use a screen
reader.
WAI-ARIA addresses these accessibility challenges by defining how information
about this functionality can be provided to assistive technology. With WAI-ARIA,
an advanced Web application can be made accessible and usable to people with
disabilities.
Technical Solutions
More specifically, WAI-ARIA provides a framework for adding attributes to
identify features for user interaction, how they relate to each other, and their
current state. WAI-ARIA describes new navigation techniques to mark regions and
common Web structures as menus, primary content, secondary content, banner
information, and other types of Web structures. For example, with WAI-ARIA,
developers can identify regions of pages and enable keyboard users to easily
move among regions, rather than having to press Tab many times.
WAI-ARIA also includes technologies to map controls, Ajax live regions, and
events to accessibility application programming interfaces (APIs), including
custom controls used for rich Internet applications. WAI-ARIA techniques apply
to widgets such as buttons, drop-down lists, calendar functions, tree controls
(for example, expandable menus), and others.
WAI-ARIA provides Web authors with the following:
list of 6 items
• Roles to describe the type of widget presented, such as "menu," "treeitem,"
"slider," and "progressmeter"
• Roles to describe the structure of the Web page, such as headings, regions,
and tables (grids)
• Properties to describe the state widgets are in, such as "checked" for a
check box, or "haspopup" for a menu.
• Properties to define live regions of a page that are likely to get updates
(such as stock quotes), as well as an interruption policy for those updates—for
example, critical updates may be presented in an alert dialog box, and
incidental updates occur within the page
• Properties for drag-and-drop that describe drag sources and drop targets
• A way to provide keyboard navigation for the Web objects and events, such as
those mentioned above
list end
For more information, go to:
www.w3.org/WAI/intro/aria.
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