Description

There is a common footgun in web components where elements outside the shadow root (e.g. <label for="input">) are unable to reference elements inside the shadow root (e.g. <fancy-input>#shadow-root<input id="input">/#shadow-root</fancy-input>). referencetarget seeks to fix that. This negatively impacts the accessibility of shadow children.

Explainer

• WICG/web-components: https://github.com/WICG/webcomponents/blob/gh-pages/proposals/reference-target-explainer.md

Discussions

• WICG Tracking Thread Reference Target Tracking Issue WICG/webcomponents#1086
• Interop 2025 Reference Target API #792

Specification

WHATWG

web-feature

No response

Test Links

https://github.com/web-platform-tests/wpt/tree/master/shadow-dom/reference-target/tentative

Additional Signals

• Edge: Intent to Experiment https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/C3pELgMqzCY/m/DzCzBHPcAQAJ
• Gecko: No signal (Reference Target for Cross-Root ARIA mozilla/standards-positions#1035)
• WebKit: No signal (Reference Target for Cross-Root ARIA WebKit/standards-positions#356)