2026-10-27 20:57 UTC
Browsers (and, through them, assistive technologies) get accessibility information through something called the accessibility tree. This is a kind of stripped-down version of the Document Object Model (DOM), a representation of the web page that browsers use to render the page.
While the DOM contains everything needed to render the page, the accessibility tree doesn’t need to know about things like styles, colours, fonts, and shapes. Instead, it focuses on 4 things:
description
role
state
name
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@se_davidobrien@mastodon.scot 2026-10-27 21:06
Not all HTML elements need an accessible name. Headings, paragraphs, lists and so on are just text, which assistive tech already has access to. Elements that must have an accessible name include: links buttons form inputs images This is not an exhaustive list. For example, a legend inside a fieldset will serve as the fieldset’s accessible name.