ARIA in HTML allowances changes for br and wbr

[scottaohara]

Product: axe-core

Expectation: wbr and br elements only allow the none and presentation roles. And only allow the aria-hidden attribute.

Actual: br presently allows any global aria- attribute. wbr presently allows for any role and global aria-* attribute, or aria-* attribute applicable to the assigned explicit role.

role test page for wbr

Motivation: ARIA in HTML will be changing the allowances for br and wbr elements. These elements will only allow the none and presentation roles, and the aria-hidden attribute. Other roles and global aria- attributes do not make sense to be used on these elements, particularly due to their inability to be effectively modified by authors.

axe-core version: 4.3.3
chromium 94

Edit: indicating tasks requested in this issue

• Done: update role allowances for br and wbr
• TODO: ensure that aria-hidden is the only allowed aria-* attribute for br and wbr elements

[straker]

Thanks for letting us know. Should be an easy fix by updating the html-elms file and changing the allowedRoles to be ['none', 'presentation'].

As for the aria-hidden part, we'll have to modify the aria-allowed-attr-evaluate script to prevent aria-hidden specifically on these elements since it's a global attribute. But I'd like @WilcoFiers opinion before we do that first.

[scottaohara]

Thank you @straker. I'd be happy to make the PR for the updated html-elms file. Appreciate you pointing me there.

Re: your second line - i think you have a mistype or my comment was misunderstood:

we'll have to modify the aria-allowed-attr-evaluate script to prevent aria-hidden specifically on these elements

we do not want to prevent aria-hidden on these elements, but rather we want to allow aria-hidden and prevent other global attributes since they don't make sense on these elements and since they'd be in opposition to the allowed roles.

[straker]

Gotcha. Yes, I misread that. I'll think about how to best handle that case then.