Intent
The intent of this Success Criterion is to make users aware of important changes in content that are not given focus, and to do so in a way that doesn't unnecessarily interrupt their work.
The intended beneficiaries are blind and low vision users of assistive technologies with screen reader capabilities. An additional benefit is that assistive technologies for users with cognitive disabilities may achieve an alternative means of indicating (or even delaying or supressing) status messages, as preferred by the user.
The scope of this Success Criterion is specific to changes in content that involve status messages. A status message is a defined term in WCAG. There are two main criteria that determine whether something meets the definition of a status message:
- the message
provides information to the user on the success or results of an action, on the waiting state of an application, on the progress of a process, or on the existence of errors;
- the message is not delivered via a change in context.
Information can be added to pages which does not meet the definition of a status message. For example, the list of results obtained from a search are not considered a status update and thus are not covered by this Success Criterion. However, brief text messages displayed about the completion or status of the search, such as "Searching...", "18 results returned" or "No results returned" would be status updates if they do not take focus. Examples of status messages are given in the section titled Status Message Examples below.
This Success Criterion specifically addresses scenarios where new content is added to the page without changing the user's context. Changes of context, by their nature, interrupt the user by taking focus. They are already surfaced by assistive technologies, and so have already met the goal to alert the user to new content. As such, messages that involve changes of context do not need to be considered and are not within the scope of this Success Criterion. Examples of scenarios that add new content by changing the context are given in the section titled Examples of Changes That Are Not Status Messages below.
Benefits
- When appropriate roles or properties are assigned to status messages, the new content is spoken by screen readers in such a way as to assist blind and low vision users. Most sighted users can observe text peripherally added to the viewport. Such content provides additional information without affecting the user's current point of regard. The ability of an assistive technology to announce such new important text content allows more users to benefit from an awareness of the information in an equivalent manner.
- Assigning proper roles or properties to status messages provides possible future uses and personalization opportunities, such as the potential to be exploited by assistive technologies created for users with some cognitive disabilities. Where page authors elect to design additions to the screen which do not change the user's context (i.e., take focus), the information is arguably of less importance than something presented using a modal dialog, which must be acknowledged by the user. As such, depending on the user's preferences, an assistive technology may choose to delay, suppress, or transform such messages so a user is not unnecessarily interrupted; or conversely the assistive technology may highlight such messages where the user finds it optimal to do so.
Examples
Status Message Examples
- After a user presses a Search button, the page content is updated to include the results of the search, which are displayed in a section below the Search button. The change to content also includes the message "5 results returned" near the top of this new content. This text is given an appropriate role for a status message. A screen reader announces, "Five results returned".
- After a user presses an Add to Shopping Cart button, a section of content near the Shopping Cart icon adds the text "5 items". A screen reader announces "Five items" or "Shopping cart, five items".
- After a user enters incorrect text in an input called Postal Code, a message appears above the input reading "Invalid entry". The screen reader announces, "Invalid entry" or "Postal code, invalid entry".
- After a user activates a process, an icon symbolizing 'busy' appears on the screen. The screen reader announces "application busy".
- An application displays a progressbar to indicate the status of an upgrade. The element is assigned a suitable role. The screen reader provides intermittent announcements of the progress.
- After a user submits a form, text is added to the existing form which reads, "Your form was successfully submitted." The screen reader announces the same message.
- After a user unsuccessfully fills in a form because some of the data is in the incorrect format, text is added to the existing form which reads "5 errors on page". The screen reader announces the same message.
Examples of Changes that Do Not Add New Text to the Screen
This Success Criterion was intentionally worded to apply primarily when visible text is added to (or becomes visible on) the page. The reason for this is that where new text is displayed, it is intended to be visible to all users. By providing a programmatic means of ensuring the text is also surfaced through assistive technologies, the Success Criterion provides the same information to users who cannot or may not see it. However, not all changes to content involve the addition of text to the screen. The following are all considerations relevant to this Success Criterion:
- Non-displayed text specific to AT users;
- Modification of status text;
- Removal of status text; and
- Non-textual status content, such as images.
Related Resources
Resources are for information purposes only, no endorsement implied.
Examples of Changes That Are Not Status Messages
The following examples identify situations where no additional author action is necessary. All cases are excepted from this Success Criterion since they do not meet the definition of "status messages."
-
An author displays an error message in a dialog.
Since the dialog takes focus, it is defined as a change of context and does not meet the definition of a status message. As a result of taking focus, the new change of context is already announced by the screen reader, and thus does not need to be included in the scope of this Success Criterion.
-
Content is exposed or hidden when a user interacts with a user interface component, for example expanding components such as a menu, select, accordion or tree, or selecting a different tab item in a tablist.
None of the resulting changes to content meet the definition of status messages. Further, all components that meet the definition of a user interface component already have requirements specified under 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value, including the need to make notifications of changes to values and states available to user agents, including assistive technologies. As a result, changes in state, such as "expanded" or "collapsed," would be announced by the screen reader, and thus the user would be alerted to the 'addition' or 'removal' of content. As such, such content does not need to be addressed by this Success Criterion.
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After a user completes an input that indicates they are unhappy, a series of new inputs are added to the page about customer satisfaction.
The new inputs do not meet the definition of status message. They do not "provide information to the user on the success or results of an action, on the waiting state of an application, on the progress of a process or on the existence of errors," and so are not required to meet this Success Criterion.
Note: Creating a status message about these inputs being added, or notifying the user in advance that content changes may take place based on the user's response, are best practices but are not requirements in this scenario.
There are a number of considerations for content changes which are relevant to this Success Criterion, but which fall outside its scope. There are a number of situations where a short off screen message may be appropriate for screen reader users. For example:
- A form field asks “How many children do you have?” and the user types in the number 5, these fields are added to the form. Offscreen text may announce “5 form fields added”
- A list of 15 products are on a page with a “See More” button at the bottom. When the user clicks the button, offscreen text announces, “15 products added to the page”
Several Advisory Techniques are incorporated into this Understanding document.
Techniques
Each numbered item in this section represents a technique or combination of techniques that the WCAG Working Group deems sufficient for meeting this Success Criterion. However, it is not necessary to use these particular techniques. For information on using other techniques, see Understanding Techniques for WCAG Success Criteria, particularly the "Other Techniques" section.
Sufficient Techniques
Select the situation below that matches your content. Each situation includes techniques or combinations of techniques that are known and documented to be sufficient for that situation.
Situation A: If a status message advises on the success or results of an action, or the state of an application:
-
Using
role="status"@@@ technique created but URL unknown @@@ in combination with any of the following:
Situation B: If a status message conveys a suggestion, or a warning on the existence of an error:
-
ARIA19: Using ARIA role=alert or Live Regions to Identify Errors in combination with any of the following:
- G83: Providing text descriptions to identify required fields that were not completed
- G84: Providing a text description when the user provides information that is not in the list of allowed values
- G85: Providing a text description when user input falls outside the required format or values
- G139: Creating a mechanism that allows users to jump to errors
- G177: Providing suggested correction text
- G194: Providing spell checking and suggestions for text input
Note: Not all examples in the preceding general techniques use status messages to convey warnings or errors to users. A role of "alert" is only necessary where a change of context does not take place.
Situation C: If a status message conveys information on the progress of a process:
-
Using
role="log"@@@ technique created but URL unknown - Using
role="progressbar"(future link) -
Using
role="status"@@@ URL to update @@@ in combination with G193: Providing help by an assistant in the Web page
Advisory Techniques
Although not required for conformance, the following additional techniques should be considered in order to make content more accessible. Not all techniques can be used or would be effective in all situations.
- Using aria-live regions with chat clients (future link)
- Using aria-live regions to support 1.4.13 Content on Hover or Focus (future link)
- Using
role="marquee"(future link) - Using
role="timer"(future link) - Moving focus to new content, including by using
alertdialoganddialog; ARIA18: Usingaria-alertdialogto Identify Errors - Support personalization by providing an option for users to set a preference on live content; SCR14: Using scripts to make nonessential alerts optional
Failures
The following are common mistakes that are considered failures of this Success Criterion by the WCAG Working Group.
- Using
role="alert"oraria-live="assertive"on content which is not important and time-sensitive (future link) - Using a
visibilitychangeevent to hide or display a document without switching the document's live regions between active and inactive (future link)
Key Terms
hardware and/or software that acts as a user agent, or along with a mainstream user agent, to provide functionality to meet the requirements of users with disabilities that go beyond those offered by mainstream user agents
functionality provided by assistive technology includes alternative presentations (e.g., as synthesized speech or magnified content), alternative input methods (e.g., voice), additional navigation or orientation mechanisms, and content transformations (e.g., to make tables more accessible).
Assistive technologies often communicate data and messages with mainstream user agents by using and monitoring APIs.
The distinction between mainstream user agents and assistive technologies is not absolute. Many mainstream user agents provide some features to assist individuals with disabilities. The basic difference is that mainstream user agents target broad and diverse audiences that usually include people with and without disabilities. Assistive technologies target narrowly defined populations of users with specific disabilities. The assistance provided by an assistive technology is more specific and appropriate to the needs of its target users. The mainstream user agent may provide important functionality to assistive technologies like retrieving Web content from program objects or parsing markup into identifiable bundles.
Assistive technologies that are important in the context of this document include the following:
- screen magnifiers, and other visual reading assistants, which are used by people with visual, perceptual and physical print disabilities to change text font, size, spacing, color, synchronization with speech, etc. in order to improve the visual readability of rendered text and images;
- screen readers, which are used by people who are blind to read textual information through synthesized speech or braille;
- text-to-speech software, which is used by some people with cognitive, language, and learning disabilities to convert text into synthetic speech;
- speech recognition software, which may be used by people who have some physical disabilities;
- alternative keyboards, which are used by people with certain physical disabilities to simulate the keyboard (including alternate keyboards that use head pointers, single switches, sip/puff and other special input devices.);
- alternative pointing devices, which are used by people with certain physical disabilities to simulate mouse pointing and button activations.
determined by software from author-supplied data provided in a way that different user agents, including assistive technologies, can extract and present this information to users in different modalities
Determined in a markup language from elements and attributes that are accessed directly by commonly available assistive technology.
Determined from technology-specific data structures in a non-markup language and exposed to assistive technology via an accessibility API that is supported by commonly available assistive technology.
text or number by which software can identify the function of a component within Web content
A number that indicates whether an image functions as a hyperlink, command button, or check box.
New
change in content that is not a change of context, and that provides information to the user on the success or results of an action, on the waiting state of an application, on the progress of a process, or on the existence of errors