Angular Aria – A New Standard for Building Accessible Components

In several previous articles – How to adapt applications for people with disabilities,  Digital Accessibility 2025, Building an Accessible Variant Selector – we discussed the topic of digital accessibility: what ARIA is, how it is used, and in which scenarios it is particularly helpful. In this article, we will take a closer look at the new Angular Aria package, available starting from Angular version 21.

New Package – @angular/aria

This package can be installed in our projects using the following command:

npm install @angular/aria

@angular/aria is an official Angular library that provides so-called headless accessibility primitives – a set of directives and interaction patterns compliant with the WAI-ARIA specification.

It is important to note that this is not a collection of ready-made UI components. Instead, it provides directives that can be applied to custom components or HTML elements to enhance their accessibility behavior.

Example – Combobox

Let’s take the Combobox component as an example. Previously, we had to take care of it manually:

– support for ARIA attributes such as role=”combobox” or aria-expanded

– keyboard handling: ArrowUp, ArrowDown, Enter, Escape

– synchronizing the component state with the input

– focus management

With @angular/aria, we now have directives that handle the entire set of responsibilities listed above for us. Let’s look at a simplified example:

import { Combobox, ComboboxInput, ComboboxPopupContainer } from '@angular/aria/combobox';
import { Listbox, Option } from '@angular/aria/listbox';

<div ngCombobox>
  <input ngComboboxInput [(value)]="value" />

  <ng-template ngComboboxPopupContainer>
    <div ngListbox [(value)]="value">
      @for (opt of options; track opt) {
        <div ngOption [value]="opt">
          {{ opt }}
        </div>
      }
    </div>
  </ng-template>
</div>

In this example:

– ngCombobox – controls the entire interaction pattern

– ngComboboxInput – manages the input behavior and keyboard interactions

– ngListbox – represents the popup with available options

– ngOption – represents a single option

As we can see, a significant amount of manual work is eliminated, and the risk of introducing accessibility-related errors is greatly reduced.

Available Patterns

In Angular 21, Angular Aria provides directives for 12 interaction patterns:

Angular Aria vs Angular Material

Ready-made UI components provided by Angular Material already include built-in accessibility implementations. When using them, there is no need to additionally apply directives from Angular Aria.

Angular Aria, on the other hand, is intended for scenarios where we build custom components and require full control over the HTML structure and styling.

When to Use Angular Aria?

Angular Aria works best when we need WCAG-compliant, accessible interactive components with custom styling, for example:

– when building a design system

– when the interface requires specific behavior that cannot be achieved using ready-made solutions

When Not to Use Angular Aria?

Angular Aria is not the best choice in every scenario:

– when using ready-made components such as Angular Material

– when designing simple HTML elements – <button> or <input type=”radio”> already provide built-in accessibility, and applying Angular Aria directives to them would be unnecessary overengineering

Summary

Angular Aria introduces a systematic approach to accessibility in Angular applications. Instead of manually implementing ARIA attributes, keyboard handling, and focus management, we now have ready-to-use interaction patterns provided as directives and aligned with the official specifications.

It is not a replacement for Angular Material nor a ready-made UI component library. Rather, it is a tool designed for teams building custom components, design systems, or applications with high accessibility requirements.

Angular Aria reduces the risk of errors, accelerates development, and standardizes WCAG implementation across Angular projects.

It can be said that starting with version 21, accessibility is no longer an add-on – it becomes part of the framework’s architecture.

An official link to documentation is here.