ARIA, short for Accessible Rich Internet Applications, is a set of attributes you add to HTML so that assistive technology can understand a web page. Screen readers, which read a site aloud for people who cannot see it, rely on clear signals about what each element is and does. ARIA supplies those signals for interface parts that plain HTML cannot fully describe on its own, such as a custom dropdown, a tab strip or a live notification.
Think of ARIA as the audio description track on a film. The picture is already there for sighted viewers, but the narrator quietly explains “a door opens, she walks in” so a listener never loses the plot. ARIA does the same for a web page: it whispers “this is a menu, it is now open, three of five items” to a screen reader while the visual design stays exactly the same. A common example is the ARIA label, which gives an icon-only button a spoken name. It all builds on the structure of your HTML, which means good markup comes first and ARIA fills the remaining gaps.
ARIA works in three broad parts. Roles say what a thing is (“this div is a dialog”). Properties describe it (“this field is required”). States report what is happening right now (“this section is expanded”, “this checkbox is checked”). Together they turn a silent custom component into something a screen reader can announce and a keyboard user can follow, which makes ARIA a quiet but real part of good UX design.
One rule matters above all: use real HTML elements where you can, because they come with accessibility built in. Reach for ARIA only when a custom component leaves a gap, since incorrect ARIA can make a page harder to use, not easier.
At TopDevs we build accessibility in from the start and use ARIA deliberately, so the interfaces we ship work for keyboard users and screen-reader users, not just the mouse.
