From 4a199e7e8de7e7849e0d6864a0137bc50fcae9da Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Joost de Valk <joost@altha.nl>
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:10:57 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] fix(aria-usage): ARIA in HTML is an amended REC, not an April
 2026 one
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The page said ARIA in HTML "became a W3C Recommendation in April 2026".
Its publication history says otherwise: first Recommendation 9 December
2021, then republished as an amended Recommendation roughly every few
months since — 7 April 2026, 15 April 2026, and now 11 August 2026.

Pinning a date in prose or in the source title is the underlying bug,
because it rots within weeks. Dropped the date from the source title,
corrected the sentence, and added a short paragraph on why the undated
/TR/html-aria/ URL and the spec's own change log are what to read.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
---
 src/content/spec/accessibility/aria-usage.md | 8 +++++---
 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/content/spec/accessibility/aria-usage.md b/src/content/spec/accessibility/aria-usage.md
index 10732e82..3129d8bb 100644
--- a/src/content/spec/accessibility/aria-usage.md
+++ b/src/content/spec/accessibility/aria-usage.md
@@ -7,9 +7,9 @@ status: recommended
 order: 80
 appliesTo: [all]
 relatedSlugs: [semantic-html, form-labels, keyboard-navigation]
-updated: "2026-07-31T00:00:00.000Z"
+updated: "2026-08-12T00:00:00.000Z"
 sources:
-  - title: "ARIA in HTML (W3C Recommendation, 15 April 2026)"
+  - title: "ARIA in HTML (W3C Recommendation)"
     url: "https://www.w3.org/TR/html-aria/"
     publisher: "W3C"
   - title: "ARIA Authoring Practices Guide — Read Me First"
@@ -31,7 +31,9 @@ ARIA — Accessible Rich Internet Applications — is a set of HTML attributes (
 
 ARIA is a sharp tool. Used well, it lets you describe widgets the HTML spec does not cover. Used badly, it overrides the real semantics of an element and makes the page *less* accessible than the unstyled HTML would have been. The W3C's four rules of ARIA lead with the most important one: reach for native HTML first.
 
-Which roles and attributes are actually *allowed* on a given element is not a matter of taste either. [ARIA in HTML](https://www.w3.org/TR/html-aria/) became a W3C Recommendation in April 2026 and specifies it element by element. The answers are not always the intuitive ones: `role="button"` on an `<a href>` is permitted, while `<textarea>` accepts no role other than the `textbox` it already has, and `<input type="hidden">` accepts no `role` or `aria-*` attribute at all.
+Which roles and attributes are actually *allowed* on a given element is not a matter of taste either. [ARIA in HTML](https://www.w3.org/TR/html-aria/) specifies it element by element. The answers are not always the intuitive ones: `role="button"` on an `<a href>` is permitted, while `<textarea>` accepts no role other than the `textbox` it already has, and `<input type="hidden">` accepts no `role` or `aria-*` attribute at all.
+
+It has been a W3C Recommendation since December 2021, but "Recommendation" here does not mean finished. W3C republishes it as an amended Recommendation whenever the element table changes — several times a year, most recently on 11 August 2026 — so a rule you looked up two years ago may since have been added, narrowed, or dropped. Read the undated `/TR/html-aria/` URL, which always resolves to the current edition, and check the specification's own change log rather than a copy of the table in a blog post or a linter's rule set.
 
 ## How to implement