Design Nomenclature / Systems & Spec
ARIA
Also called WAI-ARIA, Accessible Rich Internet Applications
A W3C specification of roles, states, and properties that supply or override accessibility semantics where native markup can't express them. It changes only what assistive technology is told — never appearance, focus order, or keyboard behaviour, all of which remain yours to build.
In practice
Added as a fix and usually a wound: bad ARIA is worse than none, because it overrides correct native semantics with a claim the screen reader has no reason to doubt.
Not to be confused with
- Semantic markupUsing elements for what they mean rather than how they look — a button as `button`, a heading as `h2` — so role, state, and keyboard behaviour arrive from the platform rather than being rebuilt. It is what assistive technology reads. Class names mean nothing to anything except a stylesheet.
- Accessible nameThe string assistive technology announces for an element, computed by the accessible name specification from a fixed precedence: `aria-labelledby`, then `aria-label`, then native sources such as an associated `label` or the element's own content, then `title`. It is computed, not authored — you influence it, you don't set it.