<desc>

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since January 2020.

The <desc> SVG element provides an accessible, long-text description of any SVG container element or graphics element.

Text in a <desc> element is not rendered as part of the graphic. If the element can be described by visible text, it is possible to reference that text with the aria-describedby attribute. If aria-describedby is used, it will take precedence over <desc>.

The hidden text of a <desc> element can also be concatenated with the visible text of other elements using multiple IDs in an aria-describedby value. In that case, the <desc> element must provide an ID for reference.

Example

html
<svg viewBox="0 0 10 10" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
  <circle cx="5" cy="5" r="4">
    <desc>
      I'm a circle and that description is here to demonstrate how I can be
      described, but is it really necessary to describe a simple circle like me?
    </desc>
  </circle>
</svg>

Attributes

This element only includes global attributes

Usage context

CategoriesDescriptive element
Permitted contentAny elements or character data

Specifications

Specification
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 2
# DescriptionAndTitleElements

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also