Opened 3 weeks ago

Last modified 4 days ago

#36640 new Cleanup/optimization

Error messages should use aria-errormessage

Reported by: Tobias Bengfort Owned by:
Component: Forms Version: 5.2
Severity: Normal Keywords: accessibility, ui, forms
Cc: Triage Stage: Someday/Maybe
Has patch: no Needs documentation: no
Needs tests: no Patch needs improvement: no
Easy pickings: no UI/UX: yes

Description (last modified by Tobias Bengfort)

#32819 added aria-describedby to associate help texts and errors with their inputs. I recently learned that there is also the more specialized aria-errormessage.

I am not sure if using aria-describedby over aria-errormessage was a conscious decision.

One issue might be that aria-errormessage seems to be intended for client side validation. It must be used with aria-invalid="true". See also https://github.com/w3c/aria/issues/2048 for a discussion of the differences between aria-describedby and aria-errormessage.

Change History (5)

comment:1 by Tobias Bengfort, 3 weeks ago

Description: modified (diff)

comment:2 by Antoliny, 13 days ago

Thank you Tobias :)
I like this proposal.
I looked into the materials you provided and also researched aria-errormessage.

It does seem that providing error messages through aria-errormessage, instead of including both the error message and help text in aria-describedby, offers more advantages.
However, the problem lies in the support coverage of aria-errormessage.

It appears that aria-errormessage is not yet supported by macOS VoiceOver and TalkBack.
While it is supported by screen readers with higher market share( NVDA, JAWS, and iOS VoiceOver..), I wasn’t able to confidently triage this issue because of that limitation.

If we switch to using aria-errormessage, devices that don’t support it won’t read out the error message at all, which could actually make the experience worse than before.
So I think it would be best to get the accessibility team opinion on this.

comment:3 by Clifford Gama, 12 days ago

Triage Stage: UnreviewedSomeday/Maybe

Thanks @Antoliny0919 for the triage. Marking as Someday/Maybe because of limited coverage.

comment:4 by Manish Tiwari, 5 days ago

Hello sir, @Antoliny0919 Should I start working on this issue if it's not assigned??

comment:5 by Jacob Walls, 4 days ago

It is probably best to wait until we hear from the accessibility team and this ticket moves out of "Someday/Maybe" status.

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