ARIA – What should we know?

ARIA W3C logoAccording to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), “…ARIA, the Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite, defines a way to make Web content and Web applications more accessible to people with disabilities. It especially helps with dynamic content and advanced user interface controls developed with Ajax, HTML, JavaScript, and related technologies. Currently certain functionality used in Web sites is not available to some users with disabilities, especially people who rely on screen readers and people who cannot use a mouse. ARIA addresses these accessibility challenges, for example, by defining new ways for functionality to be provided to assistive technology. With ARIA, developers can make advanced Web applications accessible and usable to people with disabilities.”

But some critics have said that ARIA has “tried to be too many things to too many people” and has resulted in more problems that solutions. This recent blog article by WebAIM summarizes the controversies and gets into some of the nitty-gritty on ARIA. Be aware that this is rather technical stuff; something directed mostly to web developers.