A11y live-region politeness fixed at polite in Swiper 8 ES-module builds

Answer

No. In Swiper 8 ES-module builds, the A11y module creates its slide-change live region with aria-live="polite" and does not expose a politeness option in the a11y configuration object. There is no documented public API to switch that region to assertive, and no supported event that isolates autoplay-driven transitions from user-initiated ones.

Confirmed vs. likely

Confirmed: you must import A11y and pass it in modules: [A11y]; otherwise no ARIA labels or live region are attached. The a11y options include message strings and a notification class, but not politeness. Swiper emits generic slideChange and autoplay lifecycle events, but no documented event or event argument distinguishes autoplay-driven transitions from user-initiated ones.

Likely: Swiper hard-codes polite when it builds the notification element. Because the module does not expose a setter or a per-cause event, any assertive behavior requires either mutating an internal property or changing source.

What you can try

1. After initialization, attempt to mutate the internal live-region reference:
   

   swiper.a11y?.liveRegion?.setAttribute('aria-live', 'assertive');

   This is version-sensitive and may be reset by Swiper during subsequent slide changes.
2. If you replace the notification element, keep it a live region: preserve aria-live and aria-atomic="true" in the same container. Do not substitute a plain <div> without ARIA live semantics.
3. If you modify source, change the hard-coded polite to assertive in the A11y module’s notify() logic. This is the only durable path, but it creates a maintenance burden on every Swiper upgrade.

Important caution

Setting every slide change to assertive interrupts screen-reader users immediately. Use it only when immediate announcement is required for all transitions, not just autoplay.

One diagnostic question

Does your Swiper build reset aria-live on the notification element inside notify() after a slide change? If the attribute reverts to polite, post-init mutation is not durable and a source-level change is the only reliable option. If it persists, the internal mutation workaround is viable for your version.