The aria-hidden attribute is an important accessibility attribute in HTML that can be used to hide elements from assistive technology, such as screen readers. In this blog post, we’ll explore the aria-hidden attribute and provide a code example to show how it can be used.

The aria-hidden attribute is used to indicate that an element and its contents should be hidden from assistive technology. When applied to an element, it will prevent the element from being read by screen readers, but it will still be visible on the page. This can be useful when you have decorative elements that don’t provide any meaningful content, or when you have a complex user interface that might be confusing for screen reader users.

Here’s an example of how the aria-hidden attribute can be used in a React component:

import React from 'react';

const Header = () => {
  return (
    <header>
      <h1>My Website</h1>
      <nav>
        <ul>
          <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
          <li><a href="/about">About</a></li>
          <li><a href="/contact">Contact</a></li>
        </ul>
      </nav>
      <div aria-hidden="true">
        <img src="/images/decorative.svg" alt="" />
      </div>
    </header>
  );
};

export default Header;

In this example, we have a Header component that contains a navigation menu and a decorative image. We don’t want the decorative image to be read by screen readers, so we’ve added the aria-hidden attribute to the div element that contains the image.

When the component is rendered, the div element will be visible on the page, but it won’t be read by screen readers. This can help to improve the accessibility of your website by reducing the amount of extraneous information that’s presented to users.

In conclusion, the aria-hidden attribute is an important accessibility attribute that can be used to improve the accessibility of your website. By hiding elements that don’t provide any meaningful content, you can help to make your website more usable for users with disabilities.