The aria-hidden attribute is a property that indicates whether an element is visible or hidden to assistive technologies such as screen readers. When set to "true", it hides the element from assistive technologies while remaining visible to sighted users.
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The following code snippet shows how this attribute may be used:

​<div aria-hidden="true">

This content is hidden from assistive technologies.

</div>

While aria-hidden="true" can be useful for hiding decorative or redundant content from assistive technologies, its misuse can lead to accessibility issues. Important content hidden with this attribute may become inaccessible to users who rely on screen readers.

Web visitors who utilize a screen reader typically rely on a keyboard to tab through a page versus scrolling through the page using a mouse. Other users may also prefer using a keyboard over a mouse for speed or simply because of limitations of access to a mouse.

Maintaining a visual tab focus is important so that web visitors utilizing a keyboard for browsing know where they are within the page's content. The tab focus will often allow users to click on links to navigate throughout a website.

Tab focus can appear lost if the focus goes into a menu that expands when it is collapsed. Tab focus can also appear lost if the focus goes to an element within a slideshow when the element is not currently the one displayed on the screen. Simply put, tab focus appears lost whenever a user can tab to something not displayed on the screen.

A simple way to test tab focus is to tab through a webpage and verify that you are never taken to an element that is not displayed on the webpage.