ARIA Labels Are Probably Making Your Site Less Accessible. Here's When to Use Them (And When to Delete Them).

There's a rule in the ARIA specification that most developers never read. It's the first rule, literally called "The First Rule of ARIA Use," and it says: don't use ARIA if you can use a native HTML element instead. I bring this up because I've been reviewing a lot of accessibility remediation work lately, and I keep seeing the same pattern. A team gets flagged for accessibility issues, someone Googles "how to make accessible," and they start sprinkling ARIA attributes everywhere like hot sauce. More ARIA must mean more accessible, right? No. Often it means less accessible. Let me show you what I mean. The problem with redundant ARIA Here's something I found on a real production site last month: <button role="button" aria-label="Submit form" aria-roledescription="button"> Submit form </button> Every single ARIA attribute on this element is unnecessary. The <button> element already has an implicit role of "button." The visible text "Submit form" already serves as its a