Rule library ARIA

ARIA commands must have an accessible name

aria-command-nameWCAG 2.0 A

Ensure every ARIA button, link and menuitem has an accessible name

Who this affects

A custom button, link or menu item built with ARIA has no accessible name.

How to fix it

Add aria-label or visually-hidden text describing the action.

Effort Low · ~10 min

Where this sits in the standard

WCAG success criterionLevelEN 301 549 clause
4.1.2 Name, Role, ValueA301-549, 9.4.1.2

EN 301 549 clause 9 applies these criteria to web content. The published version referenced by the European Accessibility Act is V3.2.1, which incorporates WCAG 2.1 level A and AA. More on the standard.

How to check it by hand

Inspect the element in the browser's accessibility tree — the Accessibility panel in Chrome or Firefox DevTools. Compare the computed role, name and state with what a sighted user sees. Where they disagree, the ARIA is wrong. Native HTML is almost always the safer fix.

Automated testing settles roughly a third of the WCAG success criteria. This rule is one an automated tool detects reliably — but a clean automated result is not proof of conformance.

Reference

Deque's technical write-up for this rule: aria-command-name

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