SVG element with explicit role has non-empty accessible name

Description

This rule checks that each SVG image element that is explicitly included in the accessibility tree has a non-empty accessible name.

Applicability

This rule applies to any SVG element with an explicit semantic role of either img, graphics-document, graphics-symbol, that is included in the accessibility tree.

Expectation

Each target element has an accessible name that is not empty.

Assumptions

This rule assumes that the presence of one of the roles outlined in the applicability indicates the author’s intent to include the element in the accessibility tree and thus convey information to the user about that element.

Accessibility Support

The HTML Accessibility API Mappings specify that the <svg> element has an implicit role of graphics-document. However browser support for the graphics-document role and the SVG Accessibility API Mappings is inconsistent.

This rule is limited to the explicit use of roles, as a clear indication that content should convey meaning, until the SVG Accessibility API Mappings is more stable and browser support is more consistent.

Browser and assistive technology support for SVG <title> and <desc> elements is currently inconsistent. Using WAI ARIA in combination with the img role for non-decorative <svg> elements significantly improves accessibility browser support.

Until browser support for the SVG Accessibility API Mappings is more consistent it is recommended to explicitly remove decorative <svg> elements from the accessibility tree.

Background

Bibliography

Accessibility Requirements Mapping

1.1.1 Non-text Content (Level A)
- Learn more about 1.1.1 Non-text Content
- Required for conformance to WCAG 2.0 and later on level A and higher.
- Outcome mapping:
  - Any failed outcomes: success criterion is not satisfied
  - All passed outcomes: success criterion needs further testing
  - An inapplicable outcome: success criterion needs further testing

Input Aspects

The following aspects are required in using this rule.

Test Cases

Passed

Passed Example 1

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This svg element has an explicit role of img and an accessible name from the title element that is not empty.

<p>How many circles are there?</p>
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" role="img" width="100" height="100">
	<title>1 circle</title>
	<circle cx="50" cy="50" r="40" fill="yellow"></circle>
</svg>

Passed Example 2

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This circle element has an explicit role of graphics-symbol and an accessible name from the aria-label attribute that is not empty.

<p>How many circles are there?</p>
<svg xmlns="https://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
	<circle
		role="graphics-symbol"
		cx="50"
		cy="50"
		r="40"
		stroke="green"
		stroke-width="4"
		fill="yellow"
		aria-label="1 circle"
	></circle>
</svg>

Passed Example 3

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This svg element has an explicit role of graphics-document and an accessible name from the title element that is not empty.

<p>How many circles are there?</p>
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" role="graphics-document" width="100" height="100">
	<title>1 circle</title>
	<circle cx="50" cy="50" r="40" fill="yellow"></circle>
</svg>

Failed

Failed Example 1

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This svg element has an explicit role of img but has an empty ("") accessible name.

<p>How many circles are there?</p>
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" role="img">
	<circle cx="50" cy="50" r="40" stroke="green" stroke-width="4" fill="yellow"></circle>
</svg>

Failed Example 2

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This svg element has an explicit role of img, is included in the accessibility tree, but it has an empty ("") accessible name because the title element is empty.

<p>How many circles are there?</p>
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" role="img">
	<title></title>
	<circle cx="50" cy="50" r="40" fill="yellow"></circle>
</svg>

Failed Example 3

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This circle element has an explicit role of graphics-symbol but has an empty ("") accessible name.

<p>How many circles are there?</p>
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
	<circle role="graphics-symbol" cx="50" cy="50" r="40" stroke="green" stroke-width="4" fill="yellow"></circle>
</svg>

Failed Example 4

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This svg element with an explicit role of img has an empty ("") accessible name. The SVG text element is not used in computing the accessible name.

<p>How many circles are there?</p>
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" role="img" width="100" height="100">
	<circle cx="50" cy="50" r="40" fill="yellow"></circle>
	<text x="50%" y="50%" dominant-baseline="middle" text-anchor="middle">
		1 circle
	</text>
</svg>

Inapplicable

Inapplicable Example 1

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Neither the svg element nor the circle element has any of the three explicit roles of img, graphics-document, graphics-symbol.

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
	<circle cx="50" cy="50" r="40" fill="yellow"></circle>
</svg>

Inapplicable Example 2

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This svg element and its descendants are not included in the accessibility tree because of the aria-hidden attribute.

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" role="img" aria-hidden="true">
	<circle cx="50" cy="50" r="40" fill="yellow"></circle>
</svg>

Inapplicable Example 3

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This circle element has an explicit role that is neither img, graphics-document nor graphics-symbol.

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
	<circle role="graphics-object" cx="50" cy="50" r="40" fill="yellow"></circle>
</svg>

Glossary

Accessible Name

The accessible name is the programmatically determined name of a user interface element that is included in the accessibility tree.

The accessible name is calculated using the accessible name and description computation.

For native markup languages, such as HTML and SVG, additional information on how to calculate the accessible name can be found in HTML Accessibility API Mappings 1.0, Accessible Name and Description Computation (working draft) and SVG Accessibility API Mappings, Name and Description (working draft).

For more details, see examples of accessible name.

Note: As per the accessible name and description computation, each element always has an accessible name. When no accessible name is provided, the element will nonetheless be assigned an empty ("") one.

Note: As per the accessible name and description computation, accessible names are flat string trimmed of leading and trailing whitespace. Notably, it is not possible for a non-empty accessible name to be composed only of whitespace since these must be trimmed.

Explicit Semantic Role

The explicit semantic role of an element is determined by its role attribute (if any).

The role attribute takes a list of tokens. The explicit semantic role is the first valid role in this list. The valid roles are all non-abstract roles from WAI-ARIA Specifications. If the element has no role attribute, or if it has one with no valid role, then this element has no explicit semantic role.

Other roles may be added as they become available. Not all roles will be supported in all assistive technologies. Testers are encouraged to adjust which roles are allowed according to the accessibility support base line. For the purposes of executing test cases in all rules, it should be assumed that all roles are supported by assistive technologies so that none of the roles fail due to lack of accessibility support.

Focusable

An element is focusable if one or both of the following are true:

the element is part of sequential focus navigation; or
the element has a tabindex value that is not null.

Exception: Elements that lose focus during a period of up to 1 second after gaining focus, without the user interacting with the page the element is on, are not considered focusable.

Notes:

The 1 second time span is an arbitrary limit which is not included in WCAG. Given that scripts can manage the focus state of elements, testing the focusability of an element consistently would be impractical without a time limit.
The tabindex value of an element is the value of the tabindex attribute parsed using the rules for parsing integers. For the tabindex value to be different from null, it needs to be parsed without errors.

Included in the accessibility tree

Elements included in the accessibility tree of platform specific accessibility APIs are exposed to assistive technologies. This allows users of assistive technology to access the elements in a way that meets the requirements of the individual user.

The general rules for when elements are included in the accessibility tree are defined in the core accessibility API mappings. For native markup languages, such as HTML and SVG, additional rules for when elements are included in the accessibility tree can be found in the HTML accessibility API mappings (working draft) and the SVG accessibility API mappings (working draft).

For more details, see examples of included in the accessibility tree.

Programmatically hidden elements are removed from the accessibility tree. However, some browsers will leave focusable elements with an aria-hidden attribute set to true in the accessibility tree. Because they are hidden, these elements are considered not included in the accessibility tree. This may cause confusion for users of assistive technologies because they may still be able to interact with these focusable elements using sequential keyboard navigation, even though the element should not be included in the accessibility tree.

Namespaced Element

An element with a specific namespaceURI value from HTML namespaces. For example an “SVG element” is any element with the “SVG namespace”, which is http://www.w3.org/2000/svg.

Namespaced elements are not limited to elements described in a specification. They also include custom elements. Elements such as a and title have a different namespace depending on where they are used. For example a title in an HTML page usually has the HTML namespace. When used in an svg element, a title element has the SVG namespace instead.

Outcome

An outcome is a conclusion that comes from evaluating an ACT Rule on a test subject or one of its constituent test target. An outcome can be one of the three following types:

Inapplicable: No part of the test subject matches the applicability
Passed: A test target meets all expectations
Failed: A test target does not meet all expectations

Note: A rule has one passed or failed outcome for every test target. When there are no test targets the rule has one inapplicable outcome. This means that each test subject will have one or more outcomes.

Note: Implementations using the EARL10-Schema can express the outcome with the outcome property. In addition to passed, failed and inapplicable, EARL 1.0 also defined an incomplete outcome. While this cannot be the outcome of an ACT Rule when applied in its entirety, it often happens that rules are only partially evaluated. For example, when applicability was automated, but the expectations have to be evaluated manually. Such “interim” results can be expressed with the incomplete outcome.

Programmatically Hidden

An HTML element is programmatically hidden if either it has a computed CSS property visibility whose value is not visible; or at least one of the following is true for any of its inclusive ancestors in the flat tree:

has a computed CSS property display of none; or
has an aria-hidden attribute set to true

Note: Contrary to the other conditions, the visibility CSS property may be reverted by descendants.

Note: The HTML standard suggests setting the CSS display property to none for elements with the hidden attribute. While not required by HTML, all modern browsers follow this suggestion. Because of this the hidden attribute is not used in this definition. In browsers that use this suggestion, overriding the CSS display property can reveal elements with the hidden attribute.

WAI-ARIA specifications

The WAI ARIA Specifications group both the WAI ARIA W3C Recommendation and ARIA modules, namely:

Note: depending on the type of content being evaluated, part of the specifications might be irrelevant and should be ignored.

Rule Versions

Latest version, 31 August 2023 (compare)
- Update to reference ARIA 1.2
Previous version, 23 June 2022

Implementations

This section is not part of the official rule. It is populated dynamically and not accounted for in the change history or the last modified date.

Implementation	Type	Consistency
Alfa (fully automated) 0.80.0	Automated tool	Consistent
Alfa (semi-automated) 0.80.0	Semi-automated tool	Consistent
Axe DevTools Pro 4.37.1	Semi-automated tool	Consistent
Axe-core 4.8.3	Automated tool	Consistent
QualWeb 3.0.0	Automated tool	Consistent
SortSite 6.45	Automated tool	Consistent
Total Validator 17.4.0	Linter	Consistent
Total Validator (+Browser) 17.4.0	Automated tool	Consistent