ARIA: aria-flowto attribute

The globalaria-flowto attribute identifies the next element (or elements) in an alternate reading order of content. This allows assistive technology to override the general default of reading in document source order at the user's discretion.

Description

Web pages should be sequentially navigable. For this reason, developers are dissuaded from using the globaltabindex attribute which can change tab order and the CSSorder property, which can change visual order from the DOM order. However, in rare circumstances a reading path different from the source order is required. For such cases, thearia-flowto attribute can make the content more accessible for users of assistive technologies.

The globalaria-flowto attribute lets the author indicate to assistive technology users which element or elements might want to be focused on next, providing an alternate reading order to the source order. This allows assistive technology to read a document in an order other than the default document source reading order.

Whenaria-flowto has a singleid reference, it allows assistive technologies to, at the user's request, go to the element targeted via thatid instead of reading the document in the order of the DOM. When thearia-flowto value uses a space separated list of multipleid references, assistive technology can provide the user with a list of path choices, with eachid referenced being a choice. The path choice names are determined by the accessible name of each target element of thearia-flowto attribute.

Note:Settingaria-flowto does not impact the content's tab order. It only provides users the option to follow a content path that doesn't match the DOM order when using tech that supports this attribute.

Values

id: Theid of the next element in the alternate reading order.
id list: Space separated list of values referencing theid values of elements the user may want to go to next in the alternate reading order of content.

Associated interfaces

Element.ariaFlowToElements: TheariaFlowToElements property is part of each element's interface.Its value is an array of instances of subclasses ofElement that reflect theid references in thearia-flowto attribute (with some caveats).
ElementInternals.ariaFlowToElements: TheariaFlowToElements property is part of each custom element's interface.Its value is an array of instances of subclasses ofElement that reflect theid references in thearia-flowto attribute (with some caveats).