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HTML5 role Attribute

By Stephen Bucaro

Seeing impaired individuals may use a screen reader application to convert a webpage's text to sound. However AJAX applications can update a webpage without the user realizing the content has changed and needs to be re-processed by the screen reader application. The role attribute can be used to inform the accessibility application that the webpage content has changed, and the nature of the change. They role attribute adds semantic value (meaning) to html elements.

The role attribute is part of the Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) specification. Shown below is code using the role attribute.

<body role="document">
  <div role="banner">
    <h1 role="heading">Site Heading</h1>
  </div>
  <div role="navigation">
    <a role="link" href="page1.htm">Page 1</a>
    <a role="link" href="page2.htm">Page 2</a>
    <a role="link" href="page3.htm">Page 3</a>
  </div>
  <div role="main">Document Content</div>
  <div role="footer">Footer Information</div>
</body>

An example use of the role attribute might be using the role="navigation" value to inform a screen reader application that the menu has changed, so the user might want to re-examine it to identify the new selections. Some other useful values for the role attribute are:

alert	A message with important information has appeared or changed.
article	A section of webpage content has changed.
banner	An area that contains site related rather than page specific content has changed.
contentinfo	An area that contains information about the document has changed.
heading	A heading for a section of the page has changed.
img	An image has appeared or changed.
navigation	A group of navigation elements like a menu bar has changed.
menuitem	An option in a menu or menubar has changed.