# ARIA

> Accessible Rich Internet Applications — attributes that tell assistive technology what your markup means when HTML alone cannot.

A div styled to look like a button is a rectangle to a screen reader. ARIA bridges the gap: role='button' says what it is, aria-label names it, aria-expanded says whether the menu is open. It is the accessibility layer for everything custom — tabs, dialogs, toasts — that HTML grew up without.

The first rule of ARIA is 'do not use ARIA': the native <button> already announces itself correctly, so ARIA on top of good semantics is noise at best and a lie at worst. Reach for it where native elements genuinely cannot — and prefer fixing the markup over annotating bad markup.

## Related terms

- https://dfieldsolutions.com/en/glossary/wcag.md
- https://dfieldsolutions.com/en/glossary/semantic-html.md
- https://dfieldsolutions.com/en/glossary/hydration.md

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Source: https://dfieldsolutions.com/en/glossary/aria
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