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ARIA

ARIA roles must exist and be spelled correctly

• Rule: aria-roles
• Severity: Critical
• WCAG level A

Why it matters

An unrecognised role is discarded, and the element silently falls back to whatever it was — usually a generic div with no meaning at all.

How to fix it

1. Check the role name against the ARIA specification; most failures here are typos.
2. Use one role per element, not a list.
3. Prefer the native element that already has the role.

In markup

<div role="buton">Send</div>

<div role="button">Send</div>

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-roles (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.