Where to place the aria-controls attribute in my tabs markup

Question

I'm setting up a tabbed content section in my page using a script that follows the following syntax:

<!-- Clickable tab links -->
<ul class="js-tablist">
    <li id="tab1" class="js-tab active"><a href="#tabpanel1">Tab 1</a></li>
    <li id="tab2" class="js-tab"><a href="#tabpanel2">Tab 2</a></li>
    <li id="tab3" class="js-tab"><a href="#tabpanel3">Tab 3</a></li>
</ul>

<!-- Tab panels -->
<div id="tab-set" class="js-tabpanel-group">
    <section id="tabpanel1" class="js-tabpanel">__CONTENT__</section>
    <section id="tabpanel2" class="js-tabpanel">__CONTENT__</section>
    <section id="tabpanel3" class="js-tabpanel">__CONTENT__</section>
</div>

I will be setting various ARIA roles (role="tablist", role="tab", role="tabpanel", etc) on this structural markup via javascript (since if there's no scripting then there are no tabs) but I'm unsure quite where to place my ‘aria-controls’ attributes. Should they go on the <li> element or on its <a> child element? Or does it not matter? Indeed, the same question could be asked about role="tab" and tabindex="0" -- should these things go on the list item or the anchor?

Answer 1

Put aria-controls on the item that gets role="tab".

aria-controls is what creates the relationship between a tab and its panel. See the third bullet in the description for aria-controls from the spec: https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/states_and_properties#aria-controls

To answer your follow-on question, put the role="tab" on the <a href> since that is already primed to receive keyboard focus and be actionable by the browser. That also means you won't need to use tabindex at all.

Consider also throwing a role="presentation" on the <li> elements and role="tablist" on the <ul> (especially since you rendering the <li> inert with role="presentation").

Be prepared to also manage arrow key navigation, as by using the tab roles you are essentially telling an expert user that these tabs will behave like tabs in the OS, which honor arrow keys to switch between tabs.

Additional resources worth checking out:

• https://www.marcozehe.de/2013/02/02/advanced-aria-tip-1-tabs-in-web-apps/ (from the guy who works on accessibility at Mozilla and is a screen reader user)
• http://heydonworks.com/practical_aria_examples/#tab-interface (from a guy who does accessibility consulting and remediation)

After all this, please test it in screen readers to make sure it behaves as you expect.