aria-controls instead of aria-owns?

[jeremyZX]

In reviewing the WAI ARIA combobox pattern and seeing to what extent this library follows that pattern, I noticed that the form input is using aria-owns, which appears to be a ARIA 1.0 recommendation. At the bottom of the page, there is a note:

In ARIA 1.0, the combobox referenced its popup with aria-owns instead of aria-controls. While user agents might support comboboxes with aria-owns for backwards compatibility with legacy content, it is strongly recommended that authors use aria-controls.

Is there any possibility that you can update to use aria-controls instead of aria-owns, or a reason why one would not want to use aria-controls?

[eugeniosegala]

Echoing @jeremyZX, I have seen this being flagged as a critical accessibility issue by AXE:

Fix any of the following: Required ARIA attribute not present: aria-controls

Any chances we could update this? Happy to create a PR but wanted to discuss here before.

[36degrees]

We've previously said this might be part of an intentional 'regression' to prefer the ARIA 1.0 pattern due to better support from assistive technologies.

That was 4 years ago, so you'd hope that support for the 1.1 pattern had improved regardless, but we need to understand the nuance of this change and ensure it's thoroughly tested.