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Issues will appear here with fix suggestions// validate aria labels & roles in one click
Validate ARIA labels in your HTML instantly. Detect missing aria-label, aria-labelledby, and role attributes to improve web accessibility compliance.
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Hit "Validate ARIA" and the tool instantly scans all interactive elements.
Review errors and warnings — each comes with a suggested fix and WCAG reference.
ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) labels make web content usable for screen reader users. Missing or incorrect ARIA attributes are among the top accessibility failures on the web. This tool scans your HTML and flags every interactive element that screen readers cannot properly announce.
An ARIA label is an attribute (aria-label or aria-labelledby) that provides a text description for an HTML element, primarily for screen reader users. It is required on interactive elements like buttons and inputs that lack visible text.
The validator checks button, a, input, select, textarea, img, elements with role attributes, and any element using aria-hidden or aria-label.
This tool checks against common WCAG 2.1 success criteria related to ARIA (1.1.1, 1.3.1, 4.1.2). It flags issues that commonly cause accessibility failures, though a full WCAG audit requires manual testing too.
Errors are definitive accessibility failures — elements screen readers cannot announce at all. Warnings are potential issues that may or may not be problems depending on context, and should be reviewed manually.
No. All validation runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Your HTML is never sent to any server. This tool is 100% client-side and private.
The aria-labelledby attribute points to another element's ID. If that ID doesn't exist in your HTML snippet, screen readers have nothing to read. Make sure the referenced element is present in your markup.
Yes. You can paste your entire page's HTML source. The validator will scan all interactive elements and ARIA attributes throughout the document and return a complete report.
Add an aria-label attribute describing the button's action: <button aria-label="Close dialog">✕</button>. Alternatively, add visually-hidden text inside the button for both sighted and screen reader users.
ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) is a set of HTML attributes defined by the W3C that enable web developers to make dynamic content and user interface components accessible to people with disabilities. The most critical of these attributes are aria-label, aria-labelledby, and aria-describedby — which provide text descriptions that screen readers announce when users navigate to interactive elements.
ARIA label validation is the process of systematically checking your HTML markup to ensure every interactive element — buttons, links, inputs, form controls, images, and custom widgets — has an accessible name that screen reader software can announce to blind and low-vision users. Without proper ARIA labels, these users encounter unnamed controls they cannot identify or operate.
According to the WebAIM Million report, over 96% of homepages have detectable WCAG failures, and missing form labels and empty buttons are consistently among the top five issues found. Screen readers like JAWS, NVDA, and VoiceOver rely entirely on programmatic names — either visible text, associated <label> elements, or ARIA attributes — to describe interface elements to users.
When a button contains only an icon (like ✕ for "close" or ☰ for "menu"), sighted users understand its purpose through visual context. A screen reader user, however, will hear only "button" with no further description — making the button effectively unusable. Adding aria-label="Close dialog" takes seconds and makes the experience fully accessible.
Missing aria-label on icon-only buttons: Buttons that contain no text and no accessible label are the most common ARIA failure. Every button must have an accessible name via visible text, aria-label, or aria-labelledby.
Unlabelled form inputs: Text inputs, selects, and textareas must be associated with a <label> element or carry an aria-label. Placeholder text alone is insufficient — it disappears when users type and is not reliably read by all screen readers.
Empty aria-label attributes: An aria-label="" is worse than no label — it actively suppresses the element's accessible name, causing some screen readers to ignore it entirely.
Broken aria-labelledby references: The aria-labelledby attribute takes an element ID as its value. If that ID does not exist in the DOM, the reference is broken and the element has no accessible name.
aria-hidden on focusable elements: Applying aria-hidden="true" to an element removes it from the accessibility tree. If that element is focusable (a button, link, or input), keyboard users can still tab to it — but screen reader users receive no announcement. This creates a confusing "ghost" element in the focus order.
Role misuse: Using ARIA roles incorrectly — such as applying role="button" to a non-interactive element without adding keyboard event handlers — creates false expectations for assistive technology users who expect certain keyboard behaviors from certain roles.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 includes several success criteria that directly relate to ARIA labels:
alt text, and icon buttons needing aria-label.For icon buttons, use aria-label with a clear action description:
<!-- Before (inaccessible) -->
<button>✕</button>
<!-- After (accessible) -->
<button aria-label="Close dialog">✕</button>For form inputs without visible labels, use aria-label or a visually-hidden label:
<!-- Using aria-label -->
<input type="search" aria-label="Search products">
<!-- Using a visually-hidden label (preferred) -->
<label for="search" class="visually-hidden">Search products</label>
<input type="search" id="search">For complex widgets, use aria-labelledby to point to an existing heading:
<h2 id="modal-title">Confirm Delete</h2>
<div role="dialog" aria-labelledby="modal-title">
...
</div>Both attributes provide accessible names, but they work differently. aria-label takes a plain text string directly as its value — useful when there is no visible text to reference. aria-labelledby takes one or more element IDs and uses their text content as the accessible name — ideal when a visible heading or label already exists on screen and you want to associate it with a widget.
When both are present on the same element, aria-labelledby takes precedence. If neither is present, browsers fall back to the element's visible text content, title attribute, or (for inputs) an associated <label> element.
Automated tools like this ARIA Label Validator can catch a significant number of accessibility issues quickly, but they cannot catch everything. Some accessibility problems require manual testing with actual screen readers — NVDA (free, Windows), JAWS (Windows), VoiceOver (macOS/iOS), or TalkBack (Android) — to verify that the experience is genuinely usable. Combine automated checks with keyboard-only navigation testing and real screen reader testing for comprehensive coverage.
This tool is designed to be your first line of defense: catching the most common, most impactful ARIA failures during development, before your code reaches production — or your users.