Baseline 2025
Newly available
The ariaDescribedByElements
property of the Element
interface is an array containing the element (or elements) that provide an accessible description for the element it is applied to. The accessible description is similar to the accessible label (see ariaLabelledByElements
), but provides more verbose information.
The aria-describedby
topic contains additional information about how the attribute and property should be used.
An array of subclasses of HTMLElement
. The inner text of these elements can be joined with spaces to get the accessible description.
When read, the returned array is a static and read-only. When written, the assigned array is copied: subsequent changes to the array do not affect the value of the property.
DescriptionThe property is a flexible alternative to using the aria-describedby
attribute to set the accessible description. Unlike aria-describedby
, the elements assigned to this property do not have to have an id
attribute.
The property reflects the element's aria-describedby
attribute when it is defined, but only for listed reference id
values that match valid in-scope elements. If the property is set, then the corresponding attribute is cleared. For more information about reflected element references and scope see Reflected element references in the Reflected attributes guide.
This example shows how ariaDescribedByElements
can be used to get the accessible description defined using aria-describedby
.
The HTML defines two <span>
elements and references their ids in the aria-describedby
attribute of a <button>
.
<button aria-describedby="trash-desc1 trash-desc2">Move to trash</button>
â¦
<span id="trash-desc1">Trash will be permanently removed after 30 days.</span>
<span id="trash-desc2">Or Else!</span>
CSS
Here we'll just hide the <span>
elements that contain our accessible text.
#log {
height: 70px;
overflow: scroll;
padding: 0.5rem;
border: 1px solid black;
}
JavaScript
The code below first logs the value of the aria-describedby
attribute from Element.getAttribute()
(a string listing the id
values of the referenced elements). It then checks whether the ariaDescribedByElements
is supported, and if so, logs its value. Finally it returns the accessible string, calculated by iterating through the returned elements and concatenating their inner text.
const logElement = document.querySelector("#log");
function log(text) {
logElement.innerText = `${logElement.innerText}${text}\n`;
logElement.scrollTop = logElement.scrollHeight;
}
const buttonElement = document.querySelector("button");
log(`aria-describedby: ${buttonElement.getAttribute("aria-describedby")}`);
// Feature test for ariaDescribedByElements
if ("ariaDescribedByElements" in Element.prototype) {
// Get ariaDescribedByElements
const buttonElements = buttonElement.ariaDescribedByElements;
log(`ariaDescribedByElements: ${buttonElements}`);
// Accessible description from the elements
const text = buttonElements.map((e) => e.textContent.trim()).join(" ");
log(`Accessible description: ${text.trim()}`);
} else {
log("element.ariaDescribedByElements: not supported by browser");
}
Result
The log below shows the original element references, the associated/returned elements, and the accessible description.
Specifications Browser compatibility See alsoRetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
Search and Browse the WWW like it's 1997 | Search results from DuckDuckGo
HTML:
3.2
| Encoding:
UTF-8
| Version:
0.7.3