Angular ARIA is a collection of headless, accessible directives that implement common WAI-ARIA patterns. The directives handle keyboard interactions, ARIA attributes, focus management, and screen reader support. All you have to do is provide the HTML structure, CSS styling, and business logic!
You feel like you've already read this before? Perfectly possible, because I've just copied and pasted the paragraph from the official Angular ARIA docs. Why should I reinvent the wheel, right? It perfectly summarizes the concept.
So the Angular team just (together with v21 on Nov 19th, 2025) released a brand-new collection of components – I mean directives – that implement common web patterns while letting you choose your own HTML, styling (CSS, SCSS, or even Tailwind), and business logic (I'd suggest TypeScript).
This is pretty much the opposite approach of Angular Material, which is an opinionated Plug & Play Design System. Both are built on top of the Angular CDK A11y package. So what do we get here?
Components
In the first release with v21, the following 12 components / directives / UI patterns are available:
| search and select | navigation / menu | content organization |
|---|---|---|
| Autocomplete | Menu | Accordion |
| Listbox | Menubar | Tabs |
| Select & Multiselect | Toolbar | Tree |
| Combobox | Grid |
There are – of course – plans to extend this in the future 😏
Why is this neat?
Using the Angular ARIA directives is a great way to build Angular apps by offloading some of the heavy lifting to the Angular team while still allowing full customization and user-interface branding. BTW: Check out Jessica's talk at ViteConf on YT for other things in NG v21 that are neat.
When to use Angular ARIA?
- You know how to style things (at least Senior in CSS)
- You build a custom Design System or an enterprise component library
- You don't use any Design System and instead handcraft everything yourself
When to avoid Angular ARIA?
- You don't know how to style (Junior in CSS – join my NG Styling Workshop 🎨)
- You use a Design System or an enterprise component library (should be covered there)
- You don't care about accessibility (come on – don't be a jerk!)
Angular Styling Best Choices Matrix
| Level | Angular Material 🔌 | 3rd-party DS 🎨 | Angular ARIA ♿ | Custom UI 🛠️ | Custom DS 🏢 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Design | 🎨 Very opinionated | ⚡ Plug & Play | 🤷 Depends on you | 🤷 Depends on you | 🤷 Depends on you |
| Accessibility | ⚡ Plug & Play | 🙂 Usually okay | ⭐ Best Choice | 🤷 Depends on you | 🤷 Depends on you |
| Effort | ⭐ Very low | 🙂 Medium | 😬 High | 😅 Only if 1 app | 💀 Boss will kill ya |
| CSS Skills | 🟢 None | 🟡 Junior | 🔴 Senior | 🔴 Senior | 🟣 Master |
| Customization | 🔒 Hard | 🤷 Depends | ✔ Included | ♾️ No limits | ⭐ Best Choice |
| NG Updates | 🚫 Don’t customize | 😬 Sometimes painful | 🙂 Smooth | 😎 Very smooth | 😵 A lot of work |
| Use it for | 🚀 Prototypes & demos | 💸 Low-budget/legacy | 🌱 Greenfield | 🎨 Hobbies | 🏢 Enterprise apps |
Stay tuned for my next blog post comparing popular 3rd party Design Systems for Angular vs. Angular Material.
Workshops
If you want to deep-dive into Angular, we offer a variety of workshops – in English and German.
- Best Practices Workshop 📈 (including Design Systems & ARIA)
- NG Styling Workshop 🎨 (including Design Systems)
- Accessibility Workshop ♿ (including WAI ARIA)
- Performance Workshop 🚀 (because it's neat)
Conclusion
Angular ARIA delivers headless, accessible building blocks for fully customizable Angular components. It shifts complexity – keyboard handling, ARIA attributes, focus management – to the Angular team, making it ideal for custom Design Systems and tailored UIs without relying on heavy, opinionated frameworks.
This blog post was written by Alexander Thalhammer. Comment it LinkedIn, bsky, X or Reddit.
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