checkbox role (aria)

Expectation: convey its role

Rationale:

The user needs to know that the element has checkbox behavior.

Strength of this expectation for different types of assistive technologies:

• Screen Readers: MUST
• Voice Control: MUST

Examples:

• A screen reader might announce an element as something like "<name>, <role>"
• A screen reader might imply the role by the presence of certain context roles
• Voice Control software might let the user say something like "click, <role>".
• Voice Control software might let the user say something like "show numbers", and interactive roles will be flagged with numbers.

Expectation: convey its name

Rationale:

The user needs to know the purpose of the checkbox.

Strength of this expectation for different types of assistive technologies:

• Screen Readers: MUST
• Voice Control: MUST

Notes:

For form inputs - commands to read line by line (down and up arrows in most windows screen readers) will not always result in the name being explicitly conveyed when the virtual focus is moved to an input where the label is visually displayed and programmatically associated with the input. This is acceptable because the name is implied by the fact that it should be naturally found in the reading order. Some screen readers choose to not convey the name in these cases, likely in an effort to reduce verbosity.