ARIA Manager

This is a script that will handle events related to WAI-ARIA attributes. It's most common use is to bind click events to buttons with the [aria-controls] attribute and to toggle the attribute aria-hidden on it's target. The script acts as a state handler for elements with these attributes. If a aria-controls target changes state, the controlling buttons will reflect that state.

Installation

npm install @wezz/ariamanager

Usage

Initialize ARIA Manager

import ARIAManager from "@wezz/ariamanager";
// On document ready
new ARIAManager();

Initiation options

The constructor can take the following options object

const ariaOptions = { 
    parent: document.body, // This defined the entrypoint where ARIA Manager will query for relevant elements
    initiateElements: true // This disables the automatic initiation
};
new ARIAManager(ariaOptions);

Add WAI-ARIA attributes to markup

<button aria-controls="exampletarget1" aria-pressed="false">Open Example target 1</button>
<div id="exampletarget1" class="exampletarget" aria-hidden="true">
</div>

Advanced usage

Listening to ARIA state changes

If you want to react to something being hidden or visible, the best way is to listen to the internal events being trigged by the ARIAManager.

If a target changes it's aria-hidden state you can use the set-aria-hidden event.

<button aria-controls="eventexample">Toggle</button>
<div id="eventexample" aria-hidden="true">
</div>

const target = document.getElementById("eventexample");
target.addEventListener('set-aria-hidden', (e) => {
    console.log('New aria-hidden state is', e.detail.value);
});

Note that binding to a toggle buttons click event is not recommended when attempting to detect a state. There can be delays between the click event and that aria attributes are updated

Programatic triggers

The ARIA manager is a class with methods so you can programatically toggle elements visibility and the controlling buttons will reflect the targets state.

const ariaInstance = new ARIAManager();
// This will set the attribute to the target to be _aria-expanded="true"_. 
// And any button that targets that element and has the aria-pressed attribute will reflect that state.
ariaInstance.AriaExpand(document.getElementById("exampletarget1"), true); 

Adding markup after DOMContentLoaded

If markup has been added to a page after the ARIA Manager has been updated, it is possible to initialize new elements using a global event against the window.

window.dispatchEvent(new CustomEvent('global-markupchange', { detail: { target: document.querySelector(".additionalDataContainer") } }));

The target in the event is optional, but if a target has been added (as a HTML Element) to the detail data; Then the ARIA Manager will only search for new elements to bind to within that container.

Usage in combination of reactive frameworks (ARIA Manager Ignore)

The most common usecase is that the ARIA Manager will run on document ready. It is not recommended to use the ARIA Manager within reactive frameworks since the bindings will not re-initialize or get lost when the markup changes.

But if you have a reactive component that use aria-controls attributes on a page that has ARIA Manager, you can add the attribute data-ariamanager-ignore to the aria-controls elements within the reactive component / app to avoid having ARIA Manager adjusting attributes.

Vue Example

<button 
    aria-controls="myexamplediv" 
    data-ariamanager-ignore
    v-bind:click="this.openState = !this.openState">Toggle</button>
<div id="myexamplediv" v-bind:aria-hidden="(!this.openState)+''">
</div>

Examples

Look in the example html file for more markup examples on how to use the ARIAManager

Related packages

ARIAManager mainly works with the direct relation of elements with aria-controls and it's related targets.

ARIATabManager

There is another manager called ARIATabManager that handles the relationship between multiple elements that manage view states. Use that to easily enable tabbing behavior (close an open area if a sibling is selected).

MatchMedia Attribute Manager

Adding a aria-hidden attribute and not using it for it's intended use is bad for accessibility. Elements can be visually visible but hidden for users using screenreaders and more.

The MatchMedia Attribute Manager makes it possible to remove or add aria-hidden depending on a media query.

Use cases can be that you want to show a navigation in desktop, but in mobile it's supposed to be hidden by default and toggled by a button.

Development & Demo

Clone this repo Run npm install

To run the interactive demo, run npm run demo