Who this affects
aria-hidden is set on the <body>, which hides the entire page from screen readers. Nothing on the page is reachable.
How to fix it
Remove aria-hidden from <body>. This is usually left behind by a modal that did not clean up when it closed.
Effort Low · ~10 min
Where this sits in the standard
| WCAG success criterion | Level | EN 301 549 clause |
|---|---|---|
| 1.3.1 Info and Relationships | A | 301-549, 9.1.3.1, 9.4.1.2 |
| 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value | A | — |
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-hidden-body
See whether your site trips this rule
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