Issue with "<summary>": Does it really have an implicit role of button?

[alattalatta]

MDN URL: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/summary

What information was incorrect, unhelpful, or incomplete?

Warning: Because the <summary> element has a default role of button (which strips all roles from child elements)...

Specific section or headline?

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/summary#summaries_as_headings

What did you expect to see?

In HTML Accessibility API Mappings 1.0, there's no default role for <summary>, i.e. "No corresponding role". So, no such note at all.

"Implicit ARIA role" should be changed as well.

Did you test this? If so, how?

In both Chrome and Firefox's a11y tree, the heading's heading role is preserved.

MDN Content page report details

• Folder: en-us/web/html/element/summary
• MDN URL: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/summary
• GitHub URL: https://github.com/mdn/content/blob/main/files/en-us/web/html/element/summary/index.md
• Last commit: 303a6c3
• Document last modified: 2022-02-18T09:30:25.000Z

[sideshowbarker]

I think the https://w3c.github.io/html-aria/ spec is what normatively defines the implicit semantics for HTML elements. Anyway, at https://w3c.github.io/html-aria/#el-summary that spec at least does give role=button as the implicit semantics for summary.

Not sure what the AAM and ARIA in HTML specs are out of sync on this. @scottaohara and @stevefaulkner could speak to that.

[scottaohara]

it's "mostly" button at the platform api level. it ranges from being exposed as a "button", "disclosure triangle", "summary" and no role depending on the browser/AT used.

Honestly, it's messy and it needs to be fixed. Here are just three issues about it (there are more):

w3c/html-aria#355
whatwg/html#2272
w3c/html-aam#345

was having a bit of discussion about this in the aria wg for awhile. need to pick it back up again sometime... but need to hammer down some proposals of what to do, cause something will have to change.

[estelle]

https://w3c.github.io/html-aria/#el-summary specifies that the implicit role for summary is button.

[estelle]

i assume at some point the role will switch to a new "summary" role, but until that point, we should not update the content. Closing.