The <desc>
element provides an accessible, long-text description of any SVG container element or graphics element.
Text in a <desc>
element is not rendered as part of the graphic. If the element can be described by visible text, it is possible to reference that text with the aria-describedby
attribute. If aria-describedby
is used, it will take precedence over <desc>
.
The hidden text of a <desc>
element can also be concatenated with the visible text of other elements using multiple IDs in an aria-describedby
value. In that case, the <desc>
element must provide an ID for reference.
html,body,svg { height:100% }
<svg viewBox="0 0 10 10" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <circle cx="5" cy="5" r="4"> <desc> I'm a circle and that description is here to demonstrate how I can be described, but is it really necessary to describe a simple circle like me? </desc> </circle> </svg>
Attributes
This element only includes global attributes
Global attributes
- Core Attributes
- Most notably:
id
- Styling Attributes
class
,style
- Event Attributes
- Global event attributes, Document element event attributes
Usage notes
Categories | Descriptive element |
---|---|
Permitted content | Any elements or character data |
Specifications
Specification | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 2 The definition of '<desc>' in that specification. |
Candidate Recommendation | |
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 (Second Edition) The definition of '<desc>' in that specification. |
Recommendation | Initial definition |
Browser compatibility
The compatibility table on this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.
Desktop | Mobile | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
desc | Chrome Full support 1 | Edge Full support 12 | Firefox Full support Yes | IE Full support 9 | Opera Full support 8 | Safari Full support 3.1 | WebView Android Full support 3 | Chrome Android Full support 18 | Firefox Android Full support 4 | Opera Android Full support Yes | Safari iOS Full support 3.1 | Samsung Internet Android Full support 1.0 |
Legend
- Full support
- Full support