EPUB Type to ARIA Role Authoring Guide 1.1

Only use one digital publishing role per role attribute [wai-aria].

If you include a second role, it must be a fallback from [wai-aria].

Unlike the epub:type attribute [epub-3], the order of roles is important, and only the first recognized role is applied to an element.

Do not reapply a semantic just because your content has been chunked into separate files.

For example, ensure that the doc-part role [dpub-aria] is only applied to the section that contains the heading for the part. Do not reapply the part role for each chapter that belongs to the part, as it will be announced to users of assistive technologies each time it occurs, causing confusion.

If a landmark role (e.g., doc-chapter, doc-part, doc-index [dpub-aria]) does not include a label, assistive technologies will only announce the generic name of the role in the landmarks.

To include a more descriptive label, use the aria-labelledby attribute [wai-aria] to associate the label with the role.

If a label is not available in the text, you can supply one in an aria-label attribute [wai-aria].

If a document contains more than one instance of the same landmark role, each instance needs to be uniquely labelled to allow users to tell them apart.

The epub:type attribute [epub-3] may be used to inflect sectioning semantics on the [html] body element (e.g., to indicate front matter, or to avoid using sectioning elements), but this practice is both invalid and harmful with ARIA roles.

The body element has the implied role document [wai-aria], and you cannot define any other role on it [html-aria]. Changing the role of the body element can affect the ability to read the content for users of assistive technologies.

Assigning a role to an element overrides its default nature, so use care when applying roles to lists and list items.

Just as [html] ol and ul list elements must contain list items, elements assigned a list role must only contain elements assigned a list item role.

Similarly, a list item must always be enclosed inside of a list.

<section role="doc-bibliography">
   <h2>Select Bibliography</h2>
   
   <ol>
      <li><-- Implied bibliography entry --></li>
      …
   </ol>
</section>

Although the doc-cover role [dpub-aria] seems like it should be the same as the cover semantic [epub-ssv-11], it is actually related to the cover-image semantic [epub-3] used to identify cover images in the EPUB package document. The role is used to identify an image that represents the cover.

Do not use this role to identify a section of content containing the cover. Placing the role on an [html] section element, for example, informs assistive technologies to treat the element like they would an image. In practical terms, this means that none of its content will be available.

If a section of cover content needs to be identified as a landmark, you can use the aria-label or aria-labelledby attributes [wai-aria] with a section element.