Ensure Every ARIA Toggle Field Has an Accessible Name

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Yotam Flohr
Researcher
Blind Low vision Hearing Mobility
WCAG 2.1 Level A

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Yotam Flohr
Researcher
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Ritvik Shrivastava
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WCAG requires all toggle fields to have an accessible name. 

Why It Matters

It’s essential for every element with a semantic role to also have an accessible name to aid users who rely on assistive technologies. Semantic roles include:

  • checkbox
  • menu
  • menuitemcheckbox
  • menuitemradio
  • radio
  • radiogroup
  • switch

Fixing the Issue

Developers need to check that every ARIA toggle field has an accessible name.

Good Code Example

The aria-toggle-field-name contains five markup patterns that pass testing criteria:

Code example
<!-- checkbox --> <div id="pass1" role="checkbox">Newspaper</div> <!-- menuitemcheckbox --> <ul role="menu"> <li id="pass2" role="menuitemcheckbox" aria-label="Word wrap" aria-checked="true"></li> </ul> <!-- menuitemradio --> <p id="pass3Label">Sans-serif</p> <ul role="menu"> <li id="pass3" role="menuitemradio" aria-labelledby="pass3Label" aria-checked="true"></li> </ul> <!-- radio --> <div role="radiogroup"> <div id="pass4" role="radio" aria-checked="false" tabindex="0" title="Regular Crust"></div> </div> <!-- switch --> <div id="pass5" role="switch" aria-checked="true" aria-label="Toggle blue light:"> <span>off</span> <span>on</span> </div> Copy

Bad Code Example

The aria-toggle-field-label contains five markup patterns that fail testing criteria:

Code example
<!-- checkbox --> <div id="fail1" role="checkbox" aria-labelledby="does-not-exist"></div> <!-- menuitemcheckbox --> <ul role="menu"> <li id="fail2" role="menuitemcheckbox" aria-checked="true"></li> </ul> #3 <!-- menuitemradio --> <ul role="menu"> <li id="fail3" role="menuitemradio" aria-checked="true"></li> </ul> #4 <!-- radio --> <div role="radiogroup"> <div id="fail4" role="radio" aria-checked="false" tabindex="0"></div> </div> #5 <!-- switch --> <div id="fail5" role="switch" aria-checked="true"> <span></span> <span></span> </div> Copy

Test Cases

For more examples, visit W3C’s GitHub’s ATC Rules library