HTML Guides for nav

The HTML specification defines certain elements as having implicit ARIA roles — roles that are automatically communicated to assistive technologies without any additional attributes. The nav element is one of these: its implicit role is navigation. When you explicitly add role="navigation" to a nav element, you’re telling the browser something it already knows, which clutters your markup without adding any value.

This redundancy matters for several reasons:

• Code maintainability: Unnecessary attributes make your HTML harder to read and maintain. Future developers may wonder if the explicit role is there for a specific reason, creating confusion.
• Standards compliance: The W3C validator warns about this because the ARIA specification follows a principle often summarized as the first rule of ARIA: don’t use ARIA if a native HTML element already provides the semantics you need. Extending this principle, don’t re-declare semantics that are already present.
• No accessibility benefit: Assistive technologies like screen readers already recognize nav as a navigation landmark. Adding the explicit role doesn’t improve the experience for users of these technologies — it’s simply noise.

The role="navigation" attribute is useful when applied to a non-semantic element like a div or span that functions as navigation but can’t be changed to a nav element (for example, due to legacy constraints). But when you’re already using nav, the attribute is unnecessary.

To fix this, remove the role="navigation" attribute from your nav element. The semantic meaning is fully preserved.

Examples

Incorrect: redundant role on nav

This triggers the W3C validator warning because the navigation role is already implicit:

<nav role="navigation">
  <ul>
    <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
    <li><a href="/about">About</a></li>
    <li><a href="/contact">Contact</a></li>
  </ul>
</nav>

Correct: nav without the explicit role

Simply remove the redundant role attribute:

<nav>
  <ul>
    <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
    <li><a href="/about">About</a></li>
    <li><a href="/contact">Contact</a></li>
  </ul>
</nav>

Correct: using role="navigation" on a non-semantic element

If you cannot use a nav element, applying the role to a div is a valid approach. This does not trigger the warning:

<div role="navigation">
  <ul>
    <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
    <li><a href="/about">About</a></li>
    <li><a href="/contact">Contact</a></li>
  </ul>
</div>

Correct: labeling multiple nav elements

When a page has more than one nav, use aria-label or aria-labelledby to differentiate them for assistive technology users — but still don’t add the redundant role:

<nav aria-label="Main">
  <ul>
    <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
    <li><a href="/about">About</a></li>
  </ul>
</nav>

<nav aria-label="Footer">
  <ul>
    <li><a href="/privacy">Privacy Policy</a></li>
    <li><a href="/terms">Terms of Service</a></li>
  </ul>
</nav>