ARIA Activedescendant Needs A Focusable Element

Reports aria-activedescendant on a JSX element that cannot hold focus, because it is neither natively focusable nor given a tabIndex.

aria-activedescendant is how a composite widget says "the focus is really on this child" while the DOM focus stays on the container. That indirection only works if the container is the focused element: a screen reader reads the active descendant of whatever holds focus, so on an element that never receives focus the attribute is never consulted and the widget’s keyboard navigation is silent.

A natively focusable element needs nothing further — input, select, textarea and button are in the tab order already, and that is the usual shape of a combobox. Everything else has to opt in with a tabIndex, and its mere presence is enough: whether it is 0, -1 or computed, the author has thought about focus.

Add tabIndex={0} to the element that owns aria-activedescendant, or move the attribute onto the element that actually receives focus — usually the text input of the combobox rather than the list it controls.