Forms accessibility principles

Form accessibility is important to people with the following disabilities:

• Blindness
• Low vision
• Motor impairments
• Cognitive impairments

Websites are accessed by a variety of devices including mouse, keyboard, touchscreen, switch, joystick and assistive technologies such as screen readers and magnifiers.

When a form is not accessible, some users may be unable to navigate the form components in a logical manner, understand labels, instructions, error messages and suggestions, or submit the form.

Accessibility principles specific to forms include, but are not limited to:

• All non-text content has a text equivalent
  • Visual information should have a text equivalent.
  • Form components should have a descriptive label.
  • Interactive content or functionality should have a text equivalent.
• Information and structure can be programmatically determined
  • Form structures are marked-up correctly.
  • Field labels are coded with LABEL FOR and ID.
  • Grouped fields use FIELDSET and LEGEND elements.
• A meaningful sequence is maintained
  • The correct form sequence can be programmatically determined.
  • Layout tables present information in a meaningful way.
• Instructions do not rely on sensory characteristics
  • ASCII characters do not represent text.
• The form is keyboard operable
  • All form functionality is operable with the keyboard.
  • The keyboard focus does not get trapped in a form component.
• A logical focus order is maintained
  • The keyboard focus order that matches the visual page order is not overwritten.
• Provide mechanisms to help people find information
  • Provide a search feature to allow information to be found faster by everyone.
• Do not cause a change of context or content unexpectedly
  • When a user inputs content (or makes a selection) or when a form component receives focus, do not present them with a change in context or content without warning.
• Identify components consistency
  • Consistently identify and style similar form components.
• Identify and describe errors in text
  • Errors that are automatically detected should be identified in text and described in detail to users.
• Provide labels or instructions
  • Help prevent users from making mistakes by providing labels or instructions on how to fill out a form.
• Provide error suggestions
  • Provide relevant suggestions to help users correct form errors.
• Prevent people from making errors
  • Help prevent users from making serious errors or mistakes by providing a method to check or correct information before submitting a form.