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Accessibility

WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices Guide

Not a regulation — a pattern library. When you're building a custom widget (combobox, tree, dialog), this is the reference for getting the ARIA semantics and keyboard interactions right.

Authority
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
Version
Editor's Draft
Jurisdiction
Global
Source
w3.org
Last reviewed
2026-04-28
Last verified
pending

What it is

The W3C WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices Guide. Documents recommended ARIA roles, states, and keyboard patterns for ~30 common UI components — accordion, combobox, dialog, listbox, tree, tabs, etc. Examples include sample HTML and tested screen-reader behavior.

Why it matters

WCAG tells you *what* to achieve; APG tells you *how*. If you're shipping custom interactive components and you don't follow APG patterns, your ARIA is almost certainly wrong — and "wrong ARIA" is worse than no ARIA at all because it actively misleads assistive tech.

Who it applies to

Reference standard for any team building custom interactive components or design-system primitives.

How WQI scores it

Web Quality Index considers this standard satisfied when all of the 2 supporting factors pass.

# Factor Status
55 Heading hierarchy validity planned
57 ARIA labels presence and validity planned

0 of 2 supporting factors are currently collected. Sites where the remaining 2 haven't been measured will show as partial or unknown on this standard until the data lands.

Related standards

See also
WCAG AA , WCAG 2.1 AA

Standards that share factors with this one

Auto-computed from overlapping factor tickets in satisfiedBy, excluding standards already listed under "See also" above. Strong overlap suggests these standards rise and fall together when sites are scored.

Other references