👀 Views: 42 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-09-06

react accessibility aria javascript

After trying multiple solutions online, I still can't figure this out. I'm prototyping a solution and I'm relatively new to this, so bear with me... In my codebase, I'm integrating a third-party API that provides real-time updates to a dashboard built with React. The challenge arises when I attempt to communicate these updates to users who rely on screen readers. I want to ensure that any dynamic content changes are announced properly using ARIA live regions. So far, I've set up a `div` with the `role='alert'` and `aria-live='polite'`, but it doesn’t seem to trigger the screen reader announcements as expected. Here’s the relevant snippet: ```javascript import React, { useEffect, useState } from 'react'; const Dashboard = () => { const [message, setMessage] = useState(''); useEffect(() => { const fetchData = async () => { const response = await fetch('/api/updates'); const data = await response.json(); setMessage(data.update); }; const interval = setInterval(fetchData, 5000); return () => clearInterval(interval); }, []); return ( <div> <div role='alert' aria-live='polite'>{message}</div> {/* Other dashboard contents */} </div> ); }; export default Dashboard; ``` I also tried switching to `aria-live='assertive'`, thinking it might force the announcement, but that led to other issues where it interrupted users while they were reading previous content. Community recommendations suggest using `aria-atomic='true'` as well. When I added this to the live region, it still didn’t resolve the announcement timing. Additionally, I’m concerned about performance. Having frequent updates could lead to overwhelming announcements for users, so I’m also looking for strategies to batch or summarize updates effectively. Has anyone tackled similar challenges with ARIA live regions in React? What best practices can I employ to balance user experience while ensuring the accessibility of my real-time updates? What's the best practice here? I'm on Debian using the latest version of Javascript. This issue appeared after updating to Javascript latest. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.