fix(aria-valid-attr-value): handle multiple aria-errormessage IDs by JustasMonkev · Pull Request #4973 · dequelabs/axe-core

JustasMonkev · 2025-12-27T06:04:41Z

When aria-errormessage contains multiple space-separated IDs, the check now correctly verifies that all IDs are present in aria-describedby instead of failing to match the entire string against tokenized values.

Closes: #4957

…-describedby

CLAassistant · 2025-12-27T06:04:48Z

All committers have signed the CLA.

straker · 2026-01-05T20:34:16Z

Thanks for the pr. Unfortunately it isn't an accessibility violation if all the aria-describedby ids are not present. As long as one exists then we want to pass this check.

JustasMonkev · 2026-01-07T15:41:35Z

Thanks for the pr. Unfortunately it isn't an accessibility violation if all the aria-describedby ids are not present. As long as one exists then we want to pass this check.

Thanks for the comment, updated it

JustasMonkev · 2026-01-11T11:15:31Z

@straker could you please check again?

straker · 2026-01-22T17:13:28Z

Sorry for the delay. I've been out of office and so haven't had time to look at this. After discussing this with the team here is what we are thinking.

Testing multiple aria-errormessage ids with various screen readers and browsers, only JAWS/Chrome supports this. NVDA/Firefox only announces the first id, while VoiceOver/Safari doesn't announce any. This means that even if multiple ids are supported by the spec, only JAWS/Chrome actually support it. When cases such as this happen with ARIA attributes, we typically report this as "unsupported" and that it's not widely supported by screen readers.

Taking that into consideration, as well as the various edge cases that would need to be handled to support multiple ids (what happens if the first id isn't on the page but all others are, what happens if the last id is the only one on the page, etc.), we feel it's best to report multiple ids on aria-errormessage as unsupported.

What this would mean is that we would update the aria-errormessage check to provide a new failure message of "Multiple IDs in aria-errormessage is not widely supported in assistive technologies" and in the evaluate function check if the tokenList of aria-errormessage contains more than 2 entires, and if so set the this.data({ message: 'unsupported' }) and return false.

…ria-errormessage

JustasMonkev · 2026-01-22T20:49:07Z

Sorry for the delay. I've been out of office and so haven't had time to look at this. After discussing this with the team here is what we are thinking.

Testing multiple aria-errormessage ids with various screen readers and browsers, only JAWS/Chrome supports this. NVDA/Firefox only announces the first id, while VoiceOver/Safari doesn't announce any. This means that even if multiple ids are supported by the spec, only JAWS/Chrome actually support it. When cases such as this happen with ARIA attributes, we typically report this as "unsupported" and that it's not widely supported by screen readers.

Taking that into consideration, as well as the various edge cases that would need to be handled to support multiple ids (what happens if the first id isn't on the page but all others are, what happens if the last id is the only one on the page, etc.), we feel it's best to report multiple ids on aria-errormessage as unsupported.

What this would mean is that we would update the aria-errormessage check to provide a new failure message of "Multiple IDs in aria-errormessage is not widely supported in assistive technologies" and in the evaluate function check if the tokenList of aria-errormessage contains more than 2 entires, and if so set the this.data({ message: 'unsupported' }) and return false.

Thanks for the comment, updated it

straker

Thanks for the changes. This is almost done but needs a few more tests. There should be an integration test or 2 in aria-valid-attr-value that tests multiple ids on aria-errormessage returns false. To do this add the HTML to the file with a unique id, then add that ID to the corresponding JSON file in the violations section.

…message

JustasMonkev · 2026-01-23T19:28:58Z

Thanks for the changes. This is almost done but needs a few more tests. There should be an integration test or 2 in aria-valid-attr-value that tests multiple ids on aria-errormessage returns false. To do this add the HTML to the file with a unique id, then add that ID to the corresponding JSON file in the violations section.

Added the tests

…-valid-attr-value.html.

…ia-describedby

straker

Awesome, thanks again for all the help!

Reviewed for security

) When aria-errormessage contains multiple space-separated IDs, the check now correctly verifies that all IDs are present in aria-describedby instead of failing to match the entire string against tokenized values. Closes: #4957

### [4.11.2](v4.11.1...v4.11.2) (2026-03-30) ### Bug Fixes - **aria-valid-attr-value:** handle multiple aria-errormessage IDs ([#4973](#4973)) ([9322148](9322148)) - **aria:** prevent getOwnedVirtual from returning duplicate nodes ([#4987](#4987)) ([99d1e77](99d1e77)), closes [#4840](#4840) - **DqElement:** avoid calling constructors with cloneNode ([#5013](#5013)) ([88bc57f](88bc57f)) - **existing-rule:** aria-busy now shows an error message for a use with unallowed children ([#5017](#5017)) ([dded75a](dded75a)) - **scrollable-region-focusable:** clarify the issue is in safari ([#4995](#4995)) ([2567afd](2567afd)), closes [WebKit#190870](https://github.com/dequelabs/WebKit/issues/190870) [WebKit#277290](https://github.com/dequelabs/WebKit/issues/277290) - **scrollable-region-focusable:** do not fail scroll areas when all content is visible without scrolling ([#4993](#4993)) ([240f8b5](240f8b5)) - **target-size:** determine offset using clientRects if target is display:inline ([#5012](#5012)) ([69d81c1](69d81c1)) - **target-size:** ignore widgets that are inline with other inline elements ([#5000](#5000)) ([cf8a3c0](cf8a3c0))

## [4.12.0](v4.11.4...v4.12.0) (2026-06-01) ### Features - add gather-internals.js external script ([#5099](#5099)) ([c61d58b](c61d58b)), closes [#5080](#5080) - **aria-allowed/prohibited-attr, aria-required-parent/children:** partially support element internals role ([#5080](#5080)) ([417b48a](417b48a)), closes [#5039](#5039) [#4259](#4259) - **axe.externalAPIs:** add public api for setting elementInternal data ([#5105](#5105)) ([63bab8f](63bab8f)) - **core:** expose normalizeRunOptions ([#4998](#4998)) ([b8e6a59](b8e6a59)) - expose axe.resetLocale() to restore the default locale ([#5108](#5108)) ([c2b5292](c2b5292)), closes [#5107](#5107) - **getRules:** include rule enabled state in returned objects ([#5118](#5118)) ([75bf772](75bf772)), closes [#5116](#5116) - **list,listitem:** support element internals role ([#5119](#5119)) ([7d9d696](7d9d696)) - **new-rule:** check that aria-tab have an accessible name ([#5001](#5001)) ([0d4e4e7](0d4e4e7)), closes [#4842](#4842) - **rules:** deprecate landmark-complementary-is-top-level rules ([#4992](#4992)) ([9e09139](9e09139)), closes [#4950](#4950) - **utils:** add `getElementInternals` function ([#5077](#5077)) ([1c15f82](1c15f82)) ### Bug Fixes - **aria-allowed-attr:** restrict br and wbr elements to aria-hidden only ([#4974](#4974)) ([c6245e7](c6245e7)) - **aria-conditional-attr:** add support for radio ([#5100](#5100)) ([8223c98](8223c98)) - **aria-valid-attr-value:** handle multiple aria-errormessage IDs ([#4973](#4973)) ([0489e30](0489e30)) - **aria:** prevent getOwnedVirtual from returning duplicate nodes ([#4987](#4987)) ([48ca955](48ca955)), closes [#4840](#4840) - **commons/text:** exclude natively hidden elements from aria-labelledby accessible name ([#5076](#5076)) ([ea7202c](ea7202c)), closes [#4704](#4704) - **DqElement:** avoid calling constructors with cloneNode ([#5013](#5013)) ([0281fa1](0281fa1)) - **existing-rule:** aria-busy now shows an error message for a use with unallowed children ([#5017](#5017)) ([2067b87](2067b87)) - **helpUrl:** ensure axe.configure always updates the help URLs ([#5114](#5114)) ([c4f60ff](c4f60ff)) - **label-content-name-mismatch:** match visible text with aria-label and exclude invisible text ([#5096](#5096)) ([3a012a1](3a012a1)) - **locale:** ensure all subtags are correctly set ([#5112](#5112)) ([13005ed](13005ed)) - **scrollable-region-focusable:** clarify the issue is in safari ([#4995](#4995)) ([4ec5211](4ec5211)), closes [WebKit#190870](https://github.com/dequelabs/WebKit/issues/190870) [WebKit#277290](https://github.com/dequelabs/WebKit/issues/277290) - **scrollable-region-focusable:** do not fail scroll areas when all content is visible without scrolling ([#4993](#4993)) ([838707a](838707a)) - **target-size:** determine offset using clientRects if target is display:inline ([#5012](#5012)) ([a4b8091](a4b8091)) - **target-size:** ignore position: fixed elements that are offscreen when page is scrolled ([#5066](#5066)) ([1229a6e](1229a6e)), closes [#5065](#5065) - **target-size:** ignore widgets that are inline with other inline elements ([#5000](#5000)) ([a8dd81b](a8dd81b)) - **utils/getAncestry:** escape node name ([#5079](#5079)) ([d1fabaa](d1fabaa)), closes [#5078](#5078) - **utils:** Add null check to parseCrossOriginStylesheet, closes [#5074](#5074) ([#5075](#5075)) ([f12ef32](f12ef32)) - **utils:** update isShadowRoot to use spec-compliant custom element regex ([#5059](#5059)) ([edc6ce2](edc6ce2)), closes [#5030](#5030) This PR was opened by a robot 🤖 🎉

fix(checks): handle multiple ID tokens in aria-errormessage with aria…

bae1728

…-describedby

JustasMonkev requested a review from a team as a code owner December 27, 2025 06:04

JustasMonkev changed the title ~~fix(checks): handle multiple ID tokens in aria-errormessage with aria…~~ fix(checks): handle multiple ID tokens in aria-errormessage Dec 27, 2025

JustasMonkev changed the title ~~fix(checks): handle multiple ID tokens in aria-errormessage~~ fix(checks): handle multiple aria-errormessage IDs Dec 27, 2025

fix(checks): pass aria-error message when any token is describedby

e24e223

Merge branch 'develop' into fix/aria-errormessage-multiple-idrefs-4957

112d4d2

Merge branch 'develop' into fix/aria-errormessage-multiple-idrefs-4957

03139c9

fix(aria-errormessage): add unsupported message for multiple IDs in a…

3968264

…ria-errormessage

straker requested changes Jan 23, 2026

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fix(aria-errormessage): add test cases for multiple IDs in aria-error…

f05be6e

…message

Merge branch 'develop' into fix/aria-errormessage-multiple-idrefs-4957

44fe46a

JustasMonkev requested a review from straker January 23, 2026 19:29

straker requested changes Jan 26, 2026

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Comment thread test/integration/rules/aria-valid-attr-value/aria-valid-attr-value.html

JustasMonkev added 2 commits January 26, 2026 20:38

test: Add aria-describedby attribute to an existing test case in aria…

588d077

…-valid-attr-value.html.

fix(aria-errormessage): add support for multiple error messages in ar…

d991bde

…ia-describedby

JustasMonkev requested a review from straker January 26, 2026 18:45

straker approved these changes Jan 26, 2026

View reviewed changes

straker changed the title ~~fix(checks): handle multiple aria-errormessage IDs~~ fix(aria-valid-attr-value): handle multiple aria-errormessage IDs Jan 26, 2026

straker merged commit 0489e30 into dequelabs:develop Jan 26, 2026
22 of 23 checks passed

attest-team-ci mentioned this pull request Mar 30, 2026

chore(release): v4.12.0 #5047

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WilcoFiers mentioned this pull request Mar 30, 2026

chore(release): patch cherry-picks from develop #5048

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straker mentioned this pull request Mar 30, 2026

chore(release): v4.11.2 #5049

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attest-team-ci mentioned this pull request Jun 1, 2026

chore(release): v4.12.0 #5122

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straker mentioned this pull request Jun 10, 2026

fix(standards): update aria-errormessage and aria-details to be idrefs #5157

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fix(aria-valid-attr-value): handle multiple aria-errormessage IDs#4973

fix(aria-valid-attr-value): handle multiple aria-errormessage IDs#4973
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JustasMonkev:fix/aria-errormessage-multiple-idrefs-4957

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