# WAI-ARIA support limitations and accessibility best practices

DevFeed: [WAI-ARIA support limitations and accessibility best practices](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/wai-aria-and-its-true-impact-on-assistive-technologies-32015.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://tech.finn.no2017/06/07/wai-aria-and-its-true-impact-on-assistive-technologies/>)

Author: Tor-Martin Storsletten

Published: 2017-06-07T12:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Finn.no](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/finn-no.md>)

Topics: [aria](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/aria.md>), [Accessibility](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/accessibility.md>), [Web Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/web-development.md>), [User experience (UX)](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ux.md>)

Tags: [accessibility](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/accessibility.md>), [aria](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/aria.md>), [article](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/article.md>), [best-practices](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/best-practices.md>), [ux](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ux.md>), [web-development](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/web-development.md>)

## AI overview

This article explains how WAI-ARIA affects assistive technologies, emphasizing that support remains inconsistent across implementations. It recommends focusing on reliable accessibility fixes and universal design rather than depending on specific screen readers or ARIA features for UX improvements.

## Source excerpt

1. Introduction This article is intended for web developers who want to improve their understanding of the effect that WAI-ARIA has on assistive technologies. It will therefore be assumed that you already have basic knowledge about terms such as ARIA and screen readers. 1.1. Generalize screen readers From the perspective of web development, it serves no purpose to delve into technical details about specific brands of screen reading software. There are several reasons for this: We can't programmatically detect which assistive technologies our users are using. There are several good reasons for this, including privacy concerns pertaining to confidential information regarding personal health and diagnostics. Universal design means design for everyone, regardless of which type of assistive technology is being used. Therefore we won't talk about specific brands of screen reading software in this article. We will focus on best practices with universal design in mind. 1.2. The main issues with ARIA Firstly, support for ARIA in assistive technologies is still partial at best. A consequence of this is that only a handful of ARIA features are reliable across different implementations, and that is if we don't count older assistive technologies that have no support for ARIA at all. Therefore it becomes important to differentiate between ARIA features that we can reliably use for correcting accessibility issues versus ARIA features that we should only use for improving UX. I.e. to a certain degree we can accept that UX will differ depending on which screen reader is being used, but keeping parts of our applications inaccessible to everyone except those who are fortunate enough to use the right screen reader is unacceptable. Naturally this is something that will slowly but surely sort itself out as makers of assistive technologies continue to work on their ARIA implementations, but for the time being we ought to remain mindful of this. The second issue related to ARIA is that man