ARIA property
aria-required
Says a field has to be filled in before the form can be submitted.
It marks the field as required when it announces, so people hear the obligation before they meet the error. It does not enforce anything. Nothing stops an empty submit because of this attribute.
Which roles may carry aria-required
- Value
- true/false
- Filed as
- A property, which is how ARIA files it and not a rule about how often it changes.
- Roles that may carry it
checkbox,combobox,gridcell,listbox,radiogroup,spinbutton,textbox,tree- Roles that inherit it
columnheader,rowheader,searchbox,switch,treegrid
Those lists are not advice. Browsers are required to ignore a non-global attribute sitting on a role that does not support it, so aria-required on the wrong element is not weak, it is absent. You can read it in the DOM and nobody using a screen reader can.
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-required section of the ARIA specification.
Keeping aria-required true
So the enforcement and the announcement are two separate things you have to keep in agreement. A field that becomes optional once a checkbox is cleared has to lose this at the same moment, or people are told to fill in something the form no longer wants. Where the host language can say it, the HTML required attribute does the same job and brings the validation with it, which is one fewer thing to keep in step. And note this is about the field rather than about the error. Naming what went wrong is aria-errormessage's job, and that one needs aria-invalid alongside it.
How aria-required 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 automated catches the failure this page is about. A stale value is a valid value, on a permitted role, with the right type. It is only wrong about the world.
Attributes you will meet alongside aria-required
- aria-activedescendant Points at the item inside a composite widget that is currently active, when focus stays on the container.
- aria-autocomplete How a text field predicts what you are typing.
- aria-checked Whether a checkbox, radio or switch is on, off, or partly on.
- aria-disabled Says a control is present but not available. Unlike the disabled attribute, it stays focusable, so people can still find out it is there.
- aria-errormessage Points at the message explaining why this field is invalid. Only meaningful while aria-invalid is set.
- aria-expanded Whether the thing this control opens is currently open.
- aria-haspopup Says this control opens something, and what kind of thing it opens. A menu, a dialog, a listbox.
- aria-invalid Says a field's value has failed validation.
Every ARIA state and property · Every ARIA role · ARIA explained