How to fix aria required children on Squarespace

Steps for Squarespace

1. Squarespace does not expose direct HTML editing for its built-in blocks; go to Website → Pages → select the page → Edit.
2. For built-in widgets (dropdowns, navigation) that generate the violation, the only option is to report it to Squarespace Support, as the platform controls that HTML output.
3. For custom content areas: go to the block where the issue appears → Edit → switch to a Code Block, and write the widget markup manually with the correct ARIA role tree.
4. In Settings → Advanced → Code Injection you can add a small JavaScript snippet that post-processes the DOM on DOMContentLoaded to add missing role attributes to children of a specific container — use this as a last resort when the source cannot be changed.
5. Test with axe DevTools after publishing.

What is aria required children?

ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) is a set of attributes that tells screen readers and other assistive technologies what a piece of your page does. Some ARIA roles are "composite widgets" — they are containers that only make sense when they hold specific child roles inside them. For example, a `role="listbox"` must contain items marked with `role="option"`, and a `role="combobox"` must own a `role="listbox"` (or similar) that in turn contains `role="option"` children. When those required children are missing, the widget is structurally broken from an accessibility standpoint. The scanner flagged WCAG Success Criterion 1.3.1 ("Info and Relationships"), which requires that the structure you communicate visually is also communicated to assistive technology — and a role hierarchy missing its required children fails that test.

Screen readers used by blind or low-vision shoppers rely entirely on correct ARIA role relationships to announce and navigate interactive controls like drop-down lists, autocomplete fields, product filters, and size/colour selectors. When required child roles are absent, the screen reader either announces the container as empty, skips it entirely, or narrates meaningless raw text — making the control unusable. This directly blocks those customers from completing purchases, which is both a lost conversion and a legal accessibility risk: WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the benchmark cited in ADA, EAA (Europe), and similar legislation, and regulators and plaintiffs increasingly target ecommerce stores. Fixing this also signals to Google that your pages are well-structured, which can contribute to crawl quality and Core Web Vitals signals over time.

See the complete Aria required children guide for every platform and the full background.