Check forms for accessibility

You can check forms are accessible by clicking on each form field and testing what happens if you don't fill it out properly.

What to do

You should:

• click on the label for each form field
• submit the form with errors, for example, with missing required fields

What to look for

Check that:

• clicking on the label for a text field puts focus in the form field, which should show you that the label and the field are properly connected
• clicking on the label for a radio button or checkbox selects that option
• error messages are in text and highlighted with colours and images
• error messages explain how to correct the mistake

Why does this matter

Labels let people know what form fields are for. If the label and the form field are not properly connected, screen readers will not announce the label when focus moves to the form field. It also means speech recognition users can't select the form field by speaking its label.

Error messages need to help people fix mistakes. If an error message just repeats the label, it's not going to do that. If errors are only shown using colour, anyone who can't see colours will not know there is anything to fix.