ARIA Labels Done Wrong: The Most Common Mistakes I See in Production Code

ARIA Labels Done Wrong: The Most Common Mistakes I See in Production Code Meta: ARIA is powerful but dangerous when misused. Here are the 7 mistakes I see constantly—and how to fix them. Keyword: ARIA labels accessibility mistakes common Tags: #accessibility #aria #wcag #webdev #a11y The Golden Rule of ARIA (And Why Most People Break It) Before we talk about mistakes, let me say this clearly: No ARIA is better than bad ARIA. ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) is a powerful toolset for filling accessibility gaps. But when you use it wrong—and I mean really wrong —it makes things worse for screen reader users, not better. I've audited hundreds of codebases. I'd estimate 70% of the ARIA I see is either unnecessary or broken. And when a screen reader user encounters broken ARIA, they don't get a degraded experience. They get a confusing one. So here's the deal: I'm going to walk you through the most common mistakes I see, why they're problems, and how to fix them. By the end, you