widget role

`role="option"`

One choice inside a listbox, which has to announce whether it is currently selected.

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

Use option for one choice inside a listbox, and set aria-selected on every one of them rather than only on the chosen one. The role is only meaningful inside a listbox or a group inside one, so it cannot stand alone.

The HTML element behind role="option"

The option element inside a select is this role already, and it reports its own selected state.

What role="option" obliges you to do

It has to carry aria-selected. With no aria-selected, the option carries its implicit value of false, so a selected option announces as unselected. A missing required attribute does not go quiet. It gets a fallback, and the fallback is a confident wrong answer.
It is only valid inside group or listbox. Anywhere else it describes a relationship that is not there, so the parent never gets what this was meant to give it. A parent with the matching built-in meaning counts, which is why a listitem inside a plain ul is fine.
It has to have an accessible name. ARIA marks this one of the 34 roles that require a name, so without one a screen reader announces the role and stops. Its own text can be that name, and usually should be, because a visible name is one a voice-control user can also say out loud.
Everything inside it disappears. ARIA tells user agents not to expose the descendants of this role, so a link or a button nested inside one is gone from the accessibility tree while it is still in the tab order. That leaves a focusable thing a screen reader cannot name, which is the exact shape of broken this role model exists to prevent.

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="option" sits in the model

Inherits from: input → 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.
More specific roles below it: treeitem
States and properties it supports: aria-checked, aria-posinset, aria-setsize

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

How a checker tests role="option"

Getting this one wrong is easy to assume is a 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value problem, and mostly it is not. A role in the wrong container, or a container holding the wrong children, is tested against 1.3.1 Info and Relationships, which is Level A. A missing required state is first of all a WAI-ARIA conformance failure, and W3C notes that 4.1.2 is the looser test of the two, because a browser will often fall back on a value that passes it. Focusable content inside a role whose children are presentational is the one here that really does map straight at 4.1.2. These are the published test rules that apply.

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.
link A link goes somewhere. If it acts on the page you are already on, that is a button.
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.
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.

All 94 ARIA roles · ARIA explained · How accessible names are computed · Scan your own pages