Announce Web Page Changes to Screen Reader Users

When important dynamic changes occur on a web page, these changes must be announced to screen reader users. For instance, if the user caused a change on the web page, or a change is time-sensitive, the user must be aware that the change has taken place on the page.

One way to announce a change to screen reader users is to use an ARIA live region. The types of aria-live values you can use to announce changes are:

aria-live="polite": Use this value to announce the change in a "polite" manner, like after a screen reader finishes reading a sentence.
aria-live="assertive": Use this value to announce the change immediately. Use only if the change on the page is critical or imperative.

To learn more about how to make dynamic changes accessible, check out Deque University's course on Dynamic Updates, AJAX, and Single-Page Apps.