What is the difference between an ARIA state and a property?

A state is expected to change as the user interacts — aria-checked, aria-expanded, aria-pressed flip values in response to clicks. A property is generally set once and rarely changes, such as aria-label or aria-haspopup. Both are written the same way; the distinction is about lifecycle, and assistive technology may treat dynamic state changes as live updates.

Which ARIA attributes are global?

Global attributes apply to every element regardless of role. They include aria-label, aria-labelledby, aria-describedby, aria-hidden, aria-live, aria-atomic, aria-busy, aria-current, aria-disabled, aria-keyshortcuts, aria-roledescription, and the drag/relationship set. Non-global attributes are only valid on roles that support them.

What value type does aria-checked take?

aria-checked is a tristate token: true, false, or mixed. Most boolean ARIA attributes are true/false strings, but a few like aria-checked, aria-pressed, and aria-expanded accept an additional value (mixed or undefined) to express partial or unknown states.

Can I set aria-* attributes to any value?

No. Each attribute has a defined value type — boolean (true/false), tristate, an enumerated token list, an integer or number, an ID reference, an ID reference list, or a free string. Using an out-of-range value is ignored by assistive technology, so this reference lists the allowed type for each.

Is this the complete WAI-ARIA specification?

It covers all the standard state and property attributes from WAI-ARIA 1.2 with their value types and global flags. For the full normative text including inherited states per role and detailed authoring guidance, consult the official W3C WAI-ARIA 1.2 recommendation.

ARIA Attributes Reference

Email me this result

Get this tool's output sent to your inbox, plus one useful tool a week. No spam, unsubscribe any time.

WAI-ARIA splits its aria-* attributes into two groups: states, which change as the user interacts, and properties, which are usually set once. Both carry a defined value type, and some are global — valid on any element. This is a searchable offline reference for every standard attribute.

How it works

Each attribute is listed with four facts that decide whether your markup is valid:

Value type — true/false, a tristate (true/false/mixed), an enumerated token, an integer or number, an id reference / id reference list, or a free string. Out-of-range values are ignored by assistive technology.
State vs property — states (aria-checked, aria-expanded) are expected to change during use; properties (aria-label, aria-haspopup) generally do not.
Global — global attributes apply to every element regardless of role (aria-label, aria-hidden, aria-live); non-global ones are only valid on roles that support them.
Default — the implicit value when the attribute is absent or empty.

Example

aria-checked is a tristate state. On a role="checkbox" it must be present and set to true, false, or mixed. By contrast aria-label is a global string property — valid anywhere a name is permitted, and never changing on its own.

Notes

Boolean ARIA attributes take the strings "true"/"false", not the presence/absence pattern of HTML boolean attributes like disabled.
aria-hidden="true" removes an element and its subtree from the accessibility tree — never put it on a focusable element.
This reference lists the standard attributes; per-role required and supported sets are covered in the ARIA Role Reference.