Domains, delivery and craft
What is Form accessibility?
Building forms that anyone can complete regardless of how they interact with a page: real label elements, keyboard operability, errors associated programmatically with their fields, and required status conveyed in text rather than colour alone.
Also called: accessible forms · labelled inputs
The requirements that matter most
- A label element with a for attribute for every input — placeholders are not labels
- fieldset and legend around radio and checkbox groups
- autocomplete attributes on name, email, telephone and address fields
- aria-describedby linking each error message to its field, plus aria-invalid
- Errors announced to assistive technology, not only shown in red
- The whole form completable, submittable and recoverable by keyboard alone
Why placeholders fail
The placeholder disappears the moment someone types, removing the label exactly when it is needed to check the answer. It also usually fails contrast requirements, and it is invisible to some voice control software. It is a hint, never a label.
The commercial argument
An inaccessible form does not cost you an abstract percentage. It costs you the specific enquiry from the person who could not finish it, and you never find out it happened. Forms are where accessibility failures translate into lost revenue most directly.
Where this is covered in depth
A definition can only go so far. The 35 types of SEO, explained without the padding covers this properly — 6 minutes, free, no email required.
Who wrote this
Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan. These definitions come from client work rather than from a content brief — where an entry describes a mistake, it is usually one found on a real site. More about how I work.