Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA)

The Web Accessibility Initiative’s Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) is a technical standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to make websites and web applications more accessible to people with disabilities. Modern websites often use interactive elements such as menus, tabs or dialogue boxes, which are difficult for screen readers and other assistive technologies to interpret. WAI-ARIA supplements these elements with semantic attributes that describe their function, state and role – for example, whether a button is active or which element currently has focus. This additional information is recognised and read aloud by assistive technologies such as screen readers, enabling blind or visually impaired users to navigate websites more effectively. It is important to note that ARIA does not alter the layout, but rather enriches the code with accessibility-related information.