Accessibility Object Model

The Accessibility Object Model (AOM) is a proposed W3C web standard that aims to give JavaScript developers direct programmatic access to the browser's accessibility tree. While WAI-ARIA allows authors to annotate HTML with accessibility semantics through markup attributes, the AOM would allow JavaScript to create, modify, and query accessible node properties directly — without requiring corresponding DOM elements or ARIA attributes in the markup. The AOM proposal includes features for setting accessible properties on nodes programmatically, defining custom accessibility actions, handling accessibility events, and creating virtual accessibility tree nodes. The AOM would particularly benefit web components, canvas-based applications, and other scenarios where the visual interface does not correspond directly to DOM structure. As of the mid-2020s, parts of the AOM specification are being implemented incrementally across browsers.