While testing AI agents on websites recently, I’ve noticed something interesting: the reasoning steps sometimes mention ARIA tags. What exactly are ARIA tags? What do we need to know about them? Should we use them?
ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) is part of web accessibility. It’s a specification that extends HTML’s vocabulary and semantics. The main goal is to give better support for assistive technologies like screen readers.
ARIA introduces three main components you can spot in your site’s HTML:
- Roles: define what an element is (e.g., role=”navigation” on a div).
- Properties: add extra meaning (e.g., a button with a property saying it opens a pop-up).
- States: define the element’s condition (e.g., aria-expanded=”true” on an accordion).
For example, this button triggers a pop-up menu, so we can use the property aria-haspopup to indicate clicking this will open a popup:
<button aria-haspopup="true">
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</button>As another example, here is a div that serves as navigation and we can communicate this with the role attribute set to navigation:
<div role="navigation">
<a href="/home">Home</a>
<a href="/about">About</a>
</div>These are most often used to enhance forms, buttons, and other interactive elements. ARIA should only be used when native HTML isn’t enough and should never contradict what the native HTML already says.
If agents are looking at ARIA to understand how to interact with pages, it could help them use your site more effectively, just like it helps screen readers. That could mean reviewing and experimenting with our site’s ARIA implementation could be beneficial to improve AI interactions.
Let me be clear: I am not saying ARIA is a key factor when optimizing for AI agents. I am not saying you should invest in a big project to add ARIA to your website. ARIA is predominately a part of improving a website’s accessibility but it may have some benefit for AI agents as well.
Here’s what I’d recommend you do: When you’re experimenting with AI agents, watch their reasoning steps. Do they pick up on ARIA? If agents struggle with a form or feature, try adding ARIA roles, properties, or states and see if it makes a difference.