Technical Questions About WCAG and Accessibility
What is the difference between ARIA and semantic HTML?
Answer
Semantic HTML conveys meaning directly through native elements: a is a button to the screen reader, a is navigation, an is a second-level heading. These elements bring role, state and keyboard behavior with them out of the box, with no extra code.
ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) is a supplement for cases where native HTML is not enough, such as complex widgets like tabs, accordions, dropdowns or live regions. ARIA only adds semantics, it changes no behavior: a The first rule of ARIA is therefore: do not use ARIA if a native element does the job (Source: W3C WAI). How we apply this in practice, we show in our accessible web development. marked with role="button" must still implement keyboard operation and focus itself.