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Flutter Web: aria-describedby must be an available property on all component types (Accessibility) #162140

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Flutter Web: aria-describedby must be an available property on all component types (Accessibility)#162140
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flutter-zl
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P1High-priority issues at the top of the work lista: accessibilityAccessibility, e.g. VoiceOver or TalkBack. (aka a11y)c: new featureNothing broken; request for a new capabilityc: proposalA detailed proposal for a change to Fluttercustomer: castawayplatform-webWeb applications specificallyr: fixedIssue is closed as already fixed in a newer versionteam-accessibilityOwned by Framework Accessibility team (i.e. responsible for accessibility code in flutter/flutter)triaged-accessibilityTriaged by Framework Accessibility teamworkaround availableThere is a workaround available to overcome the issue

Description

@jcollins-disney
jcollins-disney
opened on Jan 24, 2025

Use case

The WAI-ARIA property aria-describedby must be available on all Flutter component types/widgets to provide more information about an element that the user might need.

Proposal

Add the WAI-ARIA property aria-describedby to the list of semantics flags on all Flutter component types/widgets. Its value must only be the ID of another text string element on the page (text strings are not a valid value for aria-describedby). Multiple ID's can be listed (each separated by a single space) in order to form a single accessible description.

Examples:

aria-describedby="text1"
aria-describedby="text1 text2 text3"

Activity

  1. danagbemava-nc
    added
    in triagePresently being triaged by the triage team
    c: new featureNothing broken; request for a new capability
    a: accessibilityAccessibility, e.g. VoiceOver or TalkBack. (aka a11y)
    platform-webWeb applications specifically
    c: proposalA detailed proposal for a change to Flutter
    customer: castaway
    team-accessibilityOwned by Framework Accessibility team (i.e. responsible for accessibility code in flutter/flutter)
    and removed
    in triagePresently being triaged by the triage team
    on Jan 24, 2025
  2. Piinks
    added this to Framework A11y Hotliston Feb 3, 2025

  3. chunhtai commented on Feb 3, 2025

    @chunhtai
    chunhtai
    on Feb 3, 2025
    Contributor

    I think you can workaround this by providing your own Semantics(hint:), is there a use case that you have to do it by using describedby?

  4. chunhtai
    added
    P3Issues that are less important to the Flutter project
    triaged-accessibilityTriaged by Framework Accessibility team
    on Feb 3, 2025
  5. Piinks
    added
    workaround availableThere is a workaround available to overcome the issue
    on Feb 3, 2025
  6. Piinks
    moved this to Not planned in Framework A11y Hotliston Feb 5, 2025
  7. yjbanov
    self-assigned this
    on Mar 6, 2025
  8. yjbanov
    added
    P1High-priority issues at the top of the work list
    and removed
    P3Issues that are less important to the Flutter project
    on Mar 6, 2025

  9. yjbanov commented on Mar 6, 2025

    @yjbanov
    yjbanov
    on Mar 6, 2025
    Contributor

    I think my #162094 (comment) over in the aria-labelledby issue applies to aria-describedby too. Essentially, if we have enough semantic properties - label, hint, value - to describe a node, then app code can use a Dart variable too apply the same label/description to multiple widgets. aria-labelledby seems to exist in HTML mostly because HTML doesn't support variables.

  10. yjbanov commented on Apr 17, 2025

    @yjbanov
    yjbanov
    on Apr 17, 2025
    Contributor

    We've decided to address this issue as follows:

    • Context: currently the closest thing to ARIA description Flutter has is hint. However, right now all we do is concatenate it with the label. This works for some screen readers, but not all. For example, JAWS will read label => widget type => description. However, our approach causes it to read label => description => widget type. Since description can be long, the user has to wait before they will be given the widget type.
    • Action: Flutter will implement the hint property in terms of ARIA description. The available options are aria-description and aria-describedby. Since aria-description is introduced with ARIA 1.3, we'll need to first investigate its availability across browsers (caniuse is optimistic, but MDN is less so). As part of that Flutter will incorporate a workaround for the JAWs bug that causes it to not read description when it's not accompanied by a label.
  11. flutter-zl
    assigned
    flutter-zl
    and unassigned
    yjbanov
    on Apr 25, 2025
  12. chunhtai
    moved this from Not planned to No status in Framework A11y Hotliston May 15, 2025
  13. github-merge-queue
    added a commit that references this issue on May 27, 2025

    Split hint from label and expose it via aria-description or aria-desc…

    768932e

  14. flutter-zl commented on Jun 17, 2025

    @flutter-zl
    flutter-zl
    on Jun 17, 2025
    Contributor

    This issue was fixed by #169157. Feel free to reopen this issue if issue still persists.

  15. flutter-zl
    closed this as completedon Jun 17, 2025
  16. github-project-automation
    moved this to Done in Framework A11y Hotliston Jun 17, 2025
  17. danagbemava-nc
    added
    r: fixedIssue is closed as already fixed in a newer version
    on Jun 17, 2025

  18. github-actions commented on Jul 1, 2025

    @github-actions
    github-actionsbot
    on Jul 1, 2025 – with GitHub Actions

    This thread has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity after it was closed. If you are still experiencing a similar issue, please open a new bug, including the output of flutter doctor -v and a minimal reproduction of the issue.

  19. github-actions
    locked as resolved and limited conversation to collaborators on Jul 1, 2025
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P1High-priority issues at the top of the work lista: accessibilityAccessibility, e.g. VoiceOver or TalkBack. (aka a11y)c: new featureNothing broken; request for a new capabilityc: proposalA detailed proposal for a change to Fluttercustomer: castawayplatform-webWeb applications specificallyr: fixedIssue is closed as already fixed in a newer versionteam-accessibilityOwned by Framework Accessibility team (i.e. responsible for accessibility code in flutter/flutter)triaged-accessibilityTriaged by Framework Accessibility teamworkaround availableThere is a workaround available to overcome the issue

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