Failure of Success Criterion 1.3.1 due to the use of role presentation on content which conveys semantic information

From WCAG WG

Status

  • New failure technique
  • Need to add tech notes and related aria techs for role of presentation if any
  • Added to XML by AWK 2014/1/2

Applicability

HTML and XHTML

This failure relates to:

  • Success Criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships)
    • How to Meet 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships)
    • Understanding Success Criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships)

Description

This failure occurs when a role of presentation is applied to an element whose purpose is to convey information or relationships in the content. Elements such as table, can convey information about the content contained in them via their semantic markup. The WAI-ARIA role of presentation on the other hand, is intended to suppress semantic information of content from the accessibility API and prevent user agents from conveying that information to the user. Use of the presentation role for content which should convey semantic information may prevent the user from understanding that content.

Examples

Failure Example 1

In this example, tabular data is marked up with role=presentation. Though design layout tables can be marked up in such a way, data tables need to retain their semantic information and should therefore not be marked up with role=presentation.

Example Code:

<table role="presentation">
   <caption>Fruits and their colors</caption>
   <tr>
     <th>Name</th>
     <th>Color</th>
   </tr>
   <tr>
    <td scope="row">banana</td>
    <td>yellow</td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
    <td scope="row">orange</td>
    <td>orange</td>
   </tr>
  </table>

Resources

The Roles Model

Related Techniques

Tests

Procedure

  1. Check if an element which conveys information, structure, or relationships through its semantic markup
  2. Element has the attribute role="presentation".

Expected Results

  • If check #2 is true, then this failure condition applies and the content fails the Success Criterion.