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CSS Framework Basics Prototyping with Bootstrap Building a Header, Navigation, and Jumbotron Component

Posted by Nazmul Haque Sajol
Nazmul Haque Sajol
13,594 Points

How important it's using the role attribute in an element, when you using bootstrap ?

In bootstrap documentation, they used an extra attribute (role) in most of their elements like. button, menu. Is it important to declare the role attribute in every element ?

1 Answer

Tim Makin
Tim Makin
17,261 Points
Tim Makin
Tim Makin
17,261 Points

Hi,

From what I understand the additional role attributes are there to help improve accessibility for people using screen readers. The attributes specified, e.g. "menu" and "button" are ARIA roles which provide extra information about the semantic meaning of a HTML element to screen readers.

Some elements don't need a role attribute as the default semantics are already implemented by browsers while others need to be declared. You can read more about the various ARIA roles at the W3 (http://www.w3.org/TR/aria-in-html/).

So in short you don't need to include role attributes for every element and if you didn't include any at all your code would still work fine but you should include them where necessary to help make you code as accessible as possible.

Someone can probably answer in much better detail but hopefully that make give you some hints to get started.