Accessibility: what can aria-haspopup be used for?
I have it on good authority that aria-haspopup is appropriate for sub-menus (such as a popup context menu or sub-level menu). It's used on jQuery UI Selectmenu and also used in this great example.
What I've not been able to find out is whether aria-haspopup is applicable in the following 2 examples:
- Informational popovers such as Bootstrap's - used for contextual information, but not containing any links
- Pop-up browser windows - e.g. links with
target="_blank"
Is aria-haspopup appropriate in those situations? If not, are there ARIA attributes that should be used instead?
Answer
Officially it should be used only for menus or sub-menus, from the ARIA spec 1.0:
Indicates that the element has a popup context menu or sub-level menu.
The Whatsock style guide covers this under the 'modals' section:
It might sound like a good idea to notify screen reader users that a 'Popup' is attached by adding the attribute aria-haspopup="true" to the triggering element, but this is not a good idea. ... In short, don't use aria-haspopup unless you are triggering a menu.
There is some discussion about expanding the meaning in future revisions, but for the moment assume it is for menus.
I gave an answer about Bootstrap's tooltips which should help.
For pop-up browser windows, those are announced by screen readers anyway, no extra markup is needed. (NB: It helps to include a visual indicator of a new window for screen magnifier users.)