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How-to

Use role='application'

By: Dennis Gaebel. Published: .

Table of Contents

Never use role="application" on a widely containing element such as <body> if your page consists mostly of traditional widgets or page elements such as links that the user does not have to interact with in focus mode.

Using role="application" unnecessarily can cause huge headaches for any assistive technology user trying to use your site/application. Only put it on the <body> element if your page consists solely of a widget or set of widgets that all need the focus mode[1] to be turned on.

Do

  1. Use sparingly.
  2. If your page has no resemblance to a classic document in roughly over 90% of its content.
  3. Use clear labels within your application.

Don't

  1. If a set of controls or user interface only contains these widgets that are all part of standard HTML[2]
  2. If your widget is dynamic such as a tree view, slider or table.

Unless you take a great deal of care in ensuring that you’ve recreated a lot of native–ish custom navigation, it’s almost always better to let the browser/assistive technology handle things. We only recommend using role='application' on a per–widget basis, and even then: very, very carefully.

  1. Allows the user to interact with forms and ARIA–enabled HTML elements. ↩︎

  2. Standard HTML refers to: text, password, search, tel and other newer input type derivates, textarea, checkbox, button, radio button (usually inside a fieldset/legend element wrapper), select & option(s), links, paragraphs, headings, and other things that are classic/native to documents on the web. ↩︎

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