Balancing auto-dismiss timeouts with screen reader announcement in Foundation Alerts

Configuring Zurb Foundation Alert boxes for useful, non-intrusive notifications raises a trade-off between persistence and noise. The Alert plugin activates elements with data-alert, adds a dismiss control with data-close, and supports automatic dismissal via data-options timeout. Programmatic open and close are also available through the JavaScript API.

A design constraint is that the default markup does not include ARIA live region attributes, so announcement behavior for assistive technology is not guaranteed without manual additions. Automatic timeouts reduce visual noise but may remove content before it is read, and multiple alerts stack in document flow which can cause layout shifts unless positioning is overridden.

Does the Alert plugin require manual role="alert" or aria-live attributes to ensure screen reader announcement? Which timeout value or dismissal strategy keeps alerts useful without creating notification noise when several alerts appear together? Can programmatic open and close coexist with a data-options timeout without conflicting behavior?