Live region

A live region is a part of a web page marked so that assistive technology announces changes to it automatically, without the user moving focus. Live regions are created with ARIA attributes such as aria-live, role="alert", and role="status", and are the standard way to announce dynamic updates such as form error messages.

aria-live="polite" waits for a natural pause before announcing, which suits most status updates; aria-live="assertive" (equivalent to role="alert") interrupts immediately and should be reserved for urgent messages, since overusing it creates a stream of announcements that screen reader users can't tune out.

Learn more

• ARIA live region states - the aria-live property in the WAI-ARIA specification
• ARIA Authoring Practices Guide - patterns for using live regions well
• ARIA
• Assistive technology