ARIA state · deprecated
aria-grabbed
Marked the item being dragged, in the drag-and-drop model ARIA deprecated in version 1.1. Here because you will meet it in older code.
It said whether this element was currently picked up. Nothing about the drag changed when it did, because it reported a state your own code was responsible for producing.
This one is deprecated. ARIA dropped it in version 1.1 along with the other half of the same drag-and-drop pair. Deprecated is not the same as dead. Platform mappings for both still exist, and ARIA encourages user agents to go on supporting deprecated features, so nothing here says it never worked. What it says is that nothing new should carry it.
Which roles may carry aria-grabbed
- Value
- true/false/undefined
- Filed as
- A state, which is how ARIA files it and not a rule about how often it changes.
- Roles that may carry it
- Any role. This one is global, which is why no individual role lists it.
Global means no role has to grant permission for it. There is one more place to check, because ARIA in HTML sets rules per element as well as per role, and it allows no aria-* attributes at all on a datalist or on the html element.
Every role above comes from the specification's own list for this attribute, checked name for name. The normative definition stays with the W3C, in the aria-grabbed section of the ARIA specification.
What to do with aria-grabbed
Nothing here needs keeping current, because nothing new should carry it. The useful move on finding one is to ignore the attribute and look at whether the drag-and-drop underneath it can be done without a mouse at all, which is the part this attribute never covered. Then take it out. Leaving it in costs nothing mechanically and it does tell the next developer that somebody already thought about this, which on the evidence of the markup they had not.
How aria-grabbed gets checked
There are test rules that check an ARIA attribute is one that exists, is allowed on the role underneath it, and carries a value of the right type. What they map to is ARIA's own author requirements rather than any WCAG criterion, so a misplaced attribute breaks ARIA without being a WCAG failure by itself. It becomes one under 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value the moment the missing or wrong value means the control's state cannot be worked out programmatically, which is what usually happens next.
Nothing will flag it as deprecated, either. It is still a defined ARIA attribute, so it passes the validity rules the same as any other. Finding it is a code review job rather than a testing one.
Attributes you will meet alongside aria-grabbed
- aria-atomic Whether an update should be read whole, or only the part that changed.
- aria-busy Says a region is still being updated, so wait before announcing it.
- aria-controls Points at what this control operates. A combobox has to say what it opens.
- aria-current Marks the one item in a set that represents the here and now, such as the current page in a nav.
- aria-describedby Points at further description, read after the name. Hints and error text usually go here.
- aria-details Points at richer explanation elsewhere in the page, which people can navigate to rather than have read out.
- aria-flowto Overrides reading order by pointing at what should be read next. Rarely the right answer.
- aria-hidden Removes an element from the accessibility tree while leaving it on screen.
Every ARIA state and property · Every ARIA role · ARIA explained