role="link"

What role="link" means, and when to use it

Use link when activating the thing takes the reader somewhere. That is the whole test. Screen reader users pull up a list of every link on the page and read it out of context, so a link's text has to say where it goes on its own.

The HTML element behind role="link"

An anchor with an href is a link, and it brings keyboard focus, Enter activation, the browser's own status bar preview and the right-click menu with it. An anchor without an href is not a link at all, it is a generic element, which is why that pattern goes silent.

Widget roles say an element is a control somebody has to operate

A widget role tells assistive technology that an element is interactive and what kind of control it is. Buttons, checkboxes, sliders, tabs and menu items all live here.

Using one is a promise, and the keyboard is the half people underestimate. ARIA changes what gets announced and nothing else, so calling a div a checkbox does not make the space bar toggle it. You write that yourself. Eight of these roles carry a stricter duty again, because ARIA puts a must-level obligation on authors to manage focus inside grid, listbox, menu, menubar, radiogroup, tree, treegrid and tablist.

One role here has a measured failure rate. WebAIM found an ARIA menu on 5.7% of the top million home pages in 2026, and 22% of those menus introduced barriers, because the markup and the keyboard behavior a menu needs were never added.

Where role="link" sits in the model

Inherits from

command → widget → roletype

The name can come from

Its own text, which is usually the right answer, or aria-labelledby and aria-label when the visible words will not do.

States and properties it supports

aria-disabled, aria-expanded, aria-haspopup

The normative definition stays with the W3C, so it cannot go stale here. link in the ARIA specification.

How a checker tests role="link"

Getting this one wrong is easy to assume is a 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value problem, and mostly it is not. These are the published test rules that apply.

• Role attribute has valid value

The other widget roles

• button A button does something when you activate it. If it goes to a URL instead, that is a link.
• checkbox A control with two or three states that has to announce which one it is in.
• combobox An input that pops up a list to help you fill it, and has to say what it controls and whether that list is open.
• grid A table you can move through cell by cell with the keyboard.
• gridcell One cell in a grid.
• listbox A list of options someone can move through and choose from.
• menu A list of commands, usually opened from a trigger, and built to be driven with arrow keys.
• menubar A menu that stays visible and lays its options out along a bar.
• menuitem One command inside a menu.
• menuitemcheckbox A menu item that toggles on and off like a checkbox.
• menuitemradio A menu item that is one option in a set where only one can be chosen.
• option One choice inside a listbox, which has to announce whether it is currently selected.
• progressbar Shows how far a task has got. It is read-only, not something to operate.
• radio One option in a set where only one can be chosen, and it belongs inside a radiogroup.
• radiogroup The container that turns a set of radios into a single choice rather than several separate ones.
• scrollbar A control that scrolls something, and has to say what it scrolls and where it currently sits.
• searchbox A text input meant for search queries.
• slider A control you set by moving a handle along a range.
• spinbutton A control for stepping a value up and down.
• switch A binary on-or-off control with no mixed state, usually taking effect the moment it is flipped.
• tab A label that reveals its panel, and it means nothing outside a tablist.
• tablist The container for a set of tabs, which has to actually contain tabs.
• tabpanel The panel a tab reveals.
• textbox A text input that takes free-form typing.
• tree A hierarchy whose branches open and close.
• treegrid A grid whose rows open and close, so it behaves as a table and a tree at once.
• treeitem One node in a tree.