[EuiListItemLayout] Add support for focusable disabled items via hasAriaDisabled

[mgadewoll]

Summary

Important

This PR merges into a feature branch

This PR updates EuiListItemLayout by adding hasAriaDisabled prop to enable support for focusable disabled items. This uses the same functionality implemented in button components (Beta feature).

The main intention here is to support adding tooltips in different scenarios, enabled items as well as disabled ones. Besides that, we'd want to (at least for now) keep parity for EuiListGroupItem which applies tooltips without restriction (besides via showTooltip) as it can be used as visual alternative when items are truncated (EUI docs).
This behavior to show tooltips previously only worked for mouse interactions. By supporting focusable disabled elements via hasAriaDisabled we'll extend the functionality to ensure keyboard navigation can also be supported.

Note

hasAriaDisabled is an opt-in feature.

Changes

• Adds hasAriaDisabled prop on EuiListItemLayout
• Removes the isDisabled condition for showing tooltips in EuiListItemLayout
• Adds hasAriaDisabled prop on EuiListGroupItem
• Adds manual disabled condition on EuiComboBox list item tooltips (to keep current behavior and align with EuiSelectableListItem; once we decide to make options focusable we can change this easily (see [EuiSelectable] Enable focusable disabled options #8869))

API Changes

component / parent	prop / child	change	description
EuiListItemLayout (Internal component)	hasAriaDisabled	Added	Default: false; Enables focusable disabled interactive list items
EuiListGroupItem	hasAriaDisabled	Added	Default: false; Enables focusable disabled interactive list items

Screenshots

Before	After
Screen.Recording.2026-04-09.at.16.53.41.mov	Screen.Recording.2026-04-09.at.17.05.55.mov

Impact Assessment

Note: Most PRs should be tested in Kibana to help gauge their Impact before merging.

• 🔴 Breaking changes — What will break? How many usages in Kibana/Cloud UI are impacted?
• 💅 Visual changes — May impact style overrides; could require visual testing. Explain and estimate impact.
• 🧪 Test impact — May break functional or snapshot tests (e.g., HTML structure, class names, default values).
• 🔧 Hard to integrate — If changes require substantial updates to Kibana, please stage the changes and link them here.

Impact level: 🟢 None - opt-in feature

ℹ️ The changes were tested in Kibana CI in combination with the changes from #9579. (🟢 CI build)

Release Readiness

• Documentation: {link to docs page(s)}
• Figma: {link to Figma or issue}
• Migration guide: {steps or link, for breaking/visual changes or deprecations}
• Adoption plan (new features): {link to issue/doc or outline who will integrate this and where}

QA instructions for reviewer

💻 EuiListItemLayout storybook

• verify that hasAriaDisabled=true on EuiListItemLayout results in interactive list items (element=button/a) being focusable when IsDisabled=true
• verify that hasAriaDisabled=true on EuiListGroupItem results in interactive items (onClick or href) being focusable when IsDisabled=true
• verify that disabled EuiListItemLayout and EuiListGroupItem items can show tooltips on hover and on focus (with hasAriaDisabled=true
• verify that EuiSelectableListItem and EuiComboBox list items do not support tooltips on disabled items
• verify there is no unexpected regression

Checklist before marking Ready for Review

• Filled out all sections above
• QA: Tested light/dark modes, high contrast, mobile, Chrome/Safari/Edge/Firefox, keyboard-only, screen reader
• QA: Tested in CodeSandbox and Kibana
• QA: Tested docs changes
• Tests: Added/updated Jest, Cypress, and VRT
• Changelog: Added changelog entry
• Breaking changes: Added breaking change label (if applicable)

Reviewer checklist

• Approved Impact Assessment — Acceptable to merge given the consumer impact.
• Approved Release Readiness — Docs, Figma, and migration info are sufficient to ship.

[elasticmachine]

💚 Build Succeeded

• Buildkite Build
• Commit: 436b72f
• Documentation website
• Storybook

History

• 💚 Build #3188 succeeded 9487aa4
• 💚 Build #3184 succeeded 2a17c41

cc @mgadewoll

[elasticmachine]

💚 Build Succeeded

• Buildkite Build
• Commit: 436b72f

History

• 💚 Build #6219 succeeded 9487aa4

cc @mgadewoll