---
name: ARIA notify
slug: aria-notify
category: accessibility
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: A proposed API for speaking a message directly to assistive
  technology, without the live region trick of mutating hidden text and hoping
  the timing works out.
aliases:
  - name: ariaNotify
    source: wicg
  - name: notification API
    source: wicg
  - name: confetti-free announcement
    source: community
tags:
  - assistive-tech
  - sound
  - web-platform
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - live-region
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso:
    - push-notification
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: "WICG AOM: Accessibility (ARIA) Notification API"
    url: https://wicg.github.io/aom/notification-api.html
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: an announcement has no element it belongs to
---

This one is not shipped. `ariaNotify()` is a proposal in the Web Incubator Community Group's
accessibility object model work, and no browser exposes it as a stable feature today. It earns a
record anyway, because it is the thing every [live region](/live-region) workaround is a workaround
for, and the fastest way to explain what those workarounds cost is to say what a direct call would
have looked like: one method, one string, no element.

The live region trick works, and it is what you ship, but count what it asks of you. An element has
to exist in the page *before* the message does, because a region is only watched from the moment it
is inserted, so a node created and filled in the same tick is often silent. The message has to be
written as text into that node, which means it is now content: it participates in copy, in find in
page, in any test that reads the DOM. Two identical announcements in a row are one mutation and one
utterance, so a "copied" that fires twice speaks once unless you clear the node between. And the
timing is a guess, since nothing tells you when the last announcement finished being read, which is
why the polite queue in a busy interface loses messages. [Atomic](/atomic-live-region) settings and
[busy state](/busy-state) exist to steer a mechanism that was never meant to carry arbitrary
notifications in the first place.

A notification API removes the element from the story. You call it on a node for context, hand it
the message, and the platform queues the announcement; there is no hidden text, no mutation to time,
and nothing in the DOM that a reader could stumble into with a caret. The proposal also carries what
the live region trick cannot express, including a way to mark related messages so a flood of them
can be coalesced rather than read one by one.

Until it lands, treat it as vocabulary rather than as a technique. Say "we need an announcement with
no element it belongs to" and everyone in the room knows which problem you are describing, then
build it with a [live region](/live-region) and a [status message](/status-message) as usual. When
you read a proposal thread that calls it the confetti-free announcement, that is the same idea:
speech that does not require you to keep a piece of the page around to hold it.