What is ARIA and when should you use ARIA roles and properties in HTML?

• A. Accessible Rich Internet Applications; use when native semantics are sufficient to convey functionality to assistive tech.
• B. Accessible Rich Internet Applications; use when native semantics are insufficient to convey functionality to assistive tech.
• C. A JavaScript library for ARIA.
• D. A visual design standard.

Answer: (B)

ARIA stands for Accessible Rich Internet Applications. It provides a set of attributes you add to HTML to describe roles, states, and properties so assistive technologies can understand and interact with more complex or dynamic UI. You should use ARIA when native HTML semantics aren’t enough to convey how a control behaves or what its current state is. If a native element already communicates the purpose and behavior clearly, stick with that. But for custom widgets or content that updates dynamically—things like custom sliders, tabs, dropdowns, carousels, or live regions—you use ARIA to describe how it functions (for example, what element acts as a button, what item is selected, whether a region is expanded, or what the current value is). Remember that ARIA is meant to augment, not replace, native semantics, and it requires careful implementation including proper keyboard support and keeping ARIA states in sync with the actual UI. It’s not a JavaScript library, nor a visual design standard.