ARIA: suggestion role

The suggestion role semantically denotes a single proposed change to an editable document. This should be used on an element that wraps an element with an insertion role, and one with a deletion role.

Examples

When you've got a content change that involves an insertion and a deletion, there is no way for a screen reader user to work out if the two are related or not. This is the job of role="suggestion", which should be set on an element wrapping both of them like so:

html
<p>
  Freida's pet is a
  <span role="suggestion">
    <span role="deletion">black Cat called Luna</span>
    <span role="insertion">purple T. Rex called Tiny</span></span
  >.
</p>

We could even provide an information box saying who made the suggestion and when, and associate it with the suggestion via aria-details:

html
<p>
  Freida's pet is a
  <span role="suggestion" aria-details="comment-source">
    <span role="deletion">black Cat called Luna</span>
    <span role="insertion">purple T. Rex called Tiny</span></span
  >.
</p>

<div id="comment-source">
  Suggested by Chris,
  <time datetime="2019-03-30T19:29">March 30 2019, 19:29</time>
</div>

Browsers tend to provide a default black strikethrough for deletions, and a black underline for insertions, but you'll probably want to use

Best practices

Prefer HTML

Using the <ins> and <del> element will automatically communicate a section has a role of insertion or deletion. If at all possible, prefer using the HTML elements.

Specifications

Will be part of WAI-ARIA 1.3, which is still being drafted.

See also