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ARIA

Deprecated ARIA roles no longer work

• Rule: aria-deprecated-role
• Severity: Minor
• WCAG level A

Why it matters

Roles removed from the ARIA specification are treated as unknown, so the element falls back to no role at all and its meaning disappears from the accessibility tree.

How to fix it

1. Replace the deprecated role with its current equivalent (role="directory" becomes role="list").
2. Check whether a native element does the job without any role.

In markup

<ul role="directory">...</ul>

<ul role="list">...</ul>

The requirement behind it

This rule is one way of failing the following WCAG 2.2 success criteria. The W3C, which writes the standard, explains each of them:

• 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value (opens in new tab) — WCAG level A

Further reading

Deque University on aria-deprecated-role (opens in new tab)

Deque maintains axe-core, the open-source engine our scanner runs. Their page documents the rule as the engine implements it.

Automated checks find failures a browser can prove. They cannot judge whether a caption is accurate, whether an alt text is useful, or whether a page can be operated end to end with a keyboard — those need a person.