#642·GSAP

Screen Readers do not expose SplitText

Author: aardrianCreated Feb 5, 2026Updated Feb 8, 2026

The "Screen Reader Accessibility" section on the SplitText page claims support for screen readers but misses some important caveats.

Specifically the "Built-in Aria*" section talks about using aria-label and applies it to an <h2> in the example code.

The SplitText animation demo, however, use a <div>. It seems reasonable a user would not always apply SplitText to a heading and might use code from the demo.

So here are the challenges:

My suggested changes:

  • Identify which HTML elements / ARIA roles support aria-label.
  • Counsel against using any that don't.
  • Warn of auto-translation risks.
  • Warn against using on any interactive control.

I also performed screen reader testing against the linked demo:

Pairing Works?
NVDA / Firefox yes
JAWS / Chrome no
Narrator / Edge no
VO macOS / Safari no
Orca / Firefox no
TalkBack / Chrome yes
TalkBack / Firefox no
VO iPadOS / Safari no

The YouTube video embedded on the page shows a screen reader demo, but without knowing which screen reader and browser pairing was used, I tried a few.