a11y/deprecated-aria · Deprecated ARIA role or attribute

A role or aria-* attribute ARIA 1.3 has deprecated, globally or on the role it sits on, still works today and is no longer defined there.

Severity: info · Category: a11y

Scored info rather than warning: the role or attribute still works in current assistive technology. What the finding says is that ARIA 1.3 removed it from the definition, so its meaning there is no longer guaranteed.

What it checks

Three things, judged against the ARIA 1.3 tables in component source.

A deprecated role: role="directory" (its replacement is list).
A globally deprecated attribute: aria-dropeffect and aria-grabbed, on any element.
An attribute deprecated on the resolved role: aria-haspopup on checkbox, aria-disabled on generic (a bare <div>/<span>), and the other combinations ARIA 1.2 and 1.3 removed. The role is resolved as a11y/disallowed-aria-props resolves it: an explicit role’s first concrete token, or every implicit role the element could have, with a finding only when the attribute is deprecated under all of them.

<div role="checkbox" tabindex="0" aria-checked="false" aria-haspopup="true">…</div>

<div aria-grabbed="true">…</div>

Not flagged: an attribute a11y/unknown-aria-attribute already reports. The per-role arm makes no judgment on a DPUB-ARIA role, an expression role, or a spread with no literal role, since the role is unknown there, while the deprecated role and the two global attributes are reported regardless.

Overlap with the Svelte compiler. For explicit roles the compiler reports the per-role case as not supported (a11y_role_supports_aria_props), at warning, because its ARIA data dropped the deprecated attributes rather than flagging them. The verdict is the same; the label and severity differ. On a bare <div>/<span>, the common real case with aria-disabled, the compiler is silent. It is also silent on role="directory" and on the two global attributes.

Why it matters

Deprecation in ARIA is removal from the role’s definition. Today’s assistive technology mostly still honours the old meaning; the next version need not, and a rewrite that keeps the attribute keeps a dependency on undefined behaviour.

How to fix

Replace role="directory" with role="list"; drop aria-dropeffect/aria-grabbed (drag-and-drop is expressed through the widget’s own semantics now); move a role-deprecated attribute to an element whose role still defines it, or drop it:

<div role="checkbox" tabindex="0" aria-checked="false">…</div>

Mode differences

None. This rule reads source, the same .svelte and .ts files, everywhere it runs. The CLI, the Vite plugin’s build pass, and the live dashboard’s static baseline all report it identically, and the rendered-HTML pass never re-evaluates it. Scoping a run with --route skips it: component-scoped rules have no route to attribute a finding to.

Disabling

Silence a single element with , or turn the rule off:

export default {
  rules: {
    'a11y/deprecated-aria': 'off'
  }
};