Can someone explain the HTML5 aria-* attribute?

Question

I wanted to know what the aria-* attributes are used for. What values can they have, and are they defined values or can I create my own values?

Solution

ARIA stands for Accessible Rich Internet Applications and is designed to improve the accessibility of Rich Internet Applications, i.e. to make them more usable for people with disabilities.

Help on the various attributes is available here.

I don't think you can create your own ARIA attributes.

Comments

[JP.]

I'd suggest taking a look at the following blogpost (link) - the poster explains aria and its attributes with a good deal of clarity

[danielnixon]

possible duplicate of What is HTML5 ARIA?

[Josh Russo]

the 'various attributes' link is no good right at the moment.

[Nick]

Try developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA for an overview.

[brennanyoung]

@gkrogers is right. You can't create your own aria attributes. The data- attribute prefix should be used for that (and there's some javaScript sugar for accessing them).