ACT-Rules Community

Form field label is descriptive

  • Rule Type:atomic
  • Rule Id: cc0f0a
  • Last modified: May 30, 2022
  • Accessibility Requirements Mapping:
    • 2.4.6 Headings and Labels (Level AA)
      • Learn More about 2.4.6 Headings and Labels
      • Required for conformance to WCAG 2.0 and later on level AA and higher.
      • Outcome mapping:
        • Any failed outcomes: success criterion is not satisfied.
        • All passed outcomes: success criterion needs further testing.
        • An inapplicable outcome: success criterion needs further testing.
    • G131: Providing descriptive labels
      • Learn More about technique G131
      • Not required to conformance to any W3C accessibility recommendation.
      • Outcome mapping:
        • Any failed outcomes: technique is not satisfied.
        • All passed outcomes: technique needs further testing.
        • An inapplicable outcome: technique needs further testing.
  • Input Aspects:

Description

This rule checks that labels describe the purpose of form field elements.

Applicability

This rule applies to any programmatic label of an element which has one of the following semantic roles:

  • checkbox
  • combobox
  • listbox
  • menuitemcheckbox
  • menuitemradio
  • radio
  • searchbox
  • slider
  • spinbutton
  • switch
  • textbox

and where both the element and the programmatic label are visible.

Note: The list of applicable semantic roles is derived by taking all the roles from WAI-ARIA Specifications that:

  • inherit from the abstract input or select role; and
  • do not have a required context role that itself inherits from one of those roles.

Note: The option role is not part of the list of applicable roles, because it has a required context role that inherits from the select role. Furthermore, option does not meet the definition of a User interface component. This means that WCAG 2.1 does not require it to have an accessible name.

Note: Labels in WCAG are not restricted to the label element of HTML and can be any element. This rule is only concerned about actual label elements, and elements that are programmatically marked as labels via the aria-labelledby attribute.

Expectation

Each test target, together with its visual context, describes the purpose of the associated element.

Note: It is possible for an element to have an accessible name but still have a non-descriptive label element (and even a non-descriptive label). In that case, it would pass Success Criterion 4.1.2: Name, Role and Value but still fail this rule and Success Criterion 2.4.6: Headings and Labels.

Note: Having a label which is not included in the accessible name is a violation of Success Criterion 2.5.3: Label in Name but not of this rule nor of Success Criterion 2.4.6: Headings and Labels.

Assumptions

Accessibility Support

  • Implementation of Presentational Roles Conflict Resolution varies from one browser or assistive technology to another. Depending on this, some elements can have one of the applicable semantic roles and fail this rule with some technology but users of other technologies would not experience any accessibility issue.

Background

Bibliography

Test Cases

Passed

Passed Example 1

Open in a new tab

The label element is a programmatic label of the input element and describes it.

<html lang="en">
	<label>First name:<input id="fname" type="text" name="fname"/></label>
</html>

Passed Example 2

Open in a new tab

The label element is a programmatic label of the input element and describes it.

<html lang="en">
	<label for="fname">First name:</label>
	<input id="fname" type="text" name="fname" />
</html>

Passed Example 3

Open in a new tab

The p element is a programmatic label of the input element and describes it.

<html lang="en">
	<p id="label_fname">First name:</p>
	<input aria-labelledby="label_fname" type="text" name="fname" />
</html>

Passed Example 4

Open in a new tab

The p element is a programmatic label of the input element and describes it. The programmatic label does not need to be included in the accessibility tree for this rule to apply.

<html lang="en">
	<p id="label_fname" aria-hidden="true">First name:</p>
	<input aria-labelledby="label_fname" type="text" name="fname" />
</html>

Passed Example 5

Open in a new tab

The label elements are programmatic labels of their respective input elements. The label elements, are not descriptive enough (because they are repeated over several fields). However, the headings provide a visual context that differentiates the purpose of the otherwise identically named form fields. Within their visual context, the label elements are descriptive of their respective input elements.

<html lang="en">
	<h2>Shipping</h2>
	<label>Name<input id="shipping-name" type="text" name="name"/></label>
	<label>Street<input id="shipping-street" type="text" name="street"/></label>

	<h2>Billing</h2>
	<label>Name<input id="billing-name" type="text" name="name"/></label>
	<label>Street<input id="billing-street" type="text" name="street"/></label>
</html>

Passed Example 6

Open in a new tab

Both the div and the span elements are programmatic labels of the input element. Each of them, within the visual context formed by the other one, is descriptive.

<html lang="en">
	<div id="shipping">Shipping</div>
	<span id="name">Name</span>
	<input id="shipping-name" type="text" name="name" aria-labelledby="shipping name" />
</html>

Failed

Failed Example 1

Open in a new tab

The label element is a programmatic label of the input element but does not describe it.

<html lang="en">
	<label>Menu<input id="fname" type="text" name="fname"/></label>
</html>

Failed Example 2

Open in a new tab

The label element is a programmatic label of the input element but does not describe it.

<html lang="en">
	<label for="fname">Menu</label>
	<input id="fname" type="text" name="fname" />
</html>

Failed Example 3

Open in a new tab

The span element is a programmatic label of the input element but does not describe it.

<html lang="en">
	<p id="label_fname">Menu</p>
	<input aria-labelledby="label_fname" type="text" name="fname" />
</html>

Failed Example 4

Open in a new tab

These label elements are programmatic labels of their respective input elements. They are not descriptive enough because they are reused on multiple fields. The headings are not visible. Therefore, they do not provide visual context.

<html lang="en">
	<fieldset>
		<h2 style="position: absolute; top: -9999px; left: -9999px;">Shipping address</h2>
		<label>Name: <input type="text" name="shipping-name"/></label>
		<label>Street: <input type="text" name="shipping-street"/></label>
	</fieldset>
	<fieldset>
		<h2 style="position: absolute; top: -9999px; left: -9999px;">Billing address</h2>
		<label>Name: <input type="text" name="billing-name"/></label>
		<label>Street: <input type="text" name="billing-street"/></label>
	</fieldset>
</html>

Failed Example 5

Open in a new tab

These button and span elements are both programmatic labels of the input element, but only the button is visible. It has no visual context, and is not descriptive.

<html lang="en">
	<span id="search" style="display: none">Search</span>
	<input type="text" name="search" aria-labelledby="submit search" />
	<button id="submit">Go</button>
</html>

Inapplicable

Inapplicable Example 1

Open in a new tab

The label element is not a programmatic label of any element.

<html lang="en">
	<label for="fname">First name:</label>
	<p id="fname"></p>
</html>

Inapplicable Example 2

Open in a new tab

The label element is not visible.

<html lang="en">
	<label for="fname" style="position: absolute; left: -9999px;">First name:</label>
	<label aria-hidden="true">First name:</label>
	<input id="fname" type="text" name="fname" />
</html>

Inapplicable Example 3

Open in a new tab

The label is a visible programmatic label of the input element. However, the input is not visible, hence this rule does not apply.

<html lang="en">
	<label>First name: <input style="position: absolute; top: -9999px; left: -9999px;" disabled role="none"/></label>
</html>

Glossary

Accessible Name

The accessible name is the programmatically determined name of a user interface element that is included in the accessibility tree.

The accessible name is calculated using the accessible name and description computation.

For native markup languages, such as HTML and SVG, additional information on how to calculate the accessible name can be found in HTML Accessibility API Mappings 1.0, Accessible Name and Description Computation (working draft) and SVG Accessibility API Mappings, Name and Description (working draft).

For more details, see examples of accessible name.

Note: As per the accessible name and description computation, each element always has an accessible name. When no accessible name is provided, the element will nonetheless be assigned an empty ("") one.

Note: As per the accessible name and description computation, accessible names are flat string trimmed of leading and trailing whitespace. Notably, it is not possible for a non-empty accessible name to be composed only of whitespace since these must be trimmed.

Accessibility Support for Accessible Name

  • Because the accessible name and description computation is not clear about which whitespace are considered, browsers behave differently when trimming and flattening the accessible name. For example, some browsers completely trim non-breaking spaces while some keep them in the accessible name.
  • There exists a popular browser which does not perform the same trimming and flattening depending whether the accessible name comes from content, an aria-label attribute, or an alt attribute.
  • There exists a popular browser which assign no accessible name (null) when none is provided, instead of assigned an empty accessible name ("").
  • The accessible name and description computation suggest that if an aria-labelledby attribute refers to an existing but empty element, the computation should stop and return an empty name without defaulting to the next steps. Several user agents and assistive technologies chose to use the next step in the computation in this case.

Explicit Semantic Role

The explicit semantic role of an element is determined by its role attribute (if any).

The role attribute takes a list of tokens. The explicit semantic role is the first valid role in this list. The valid roles are all non-abstract roles from WAI-ARIA Specifications. If the element has no role attribute, or if it has one with no valid role, then this element has no explicit semantic role.

Other roles may be added as they become available. Not all roles will be supported in all assistive technologies. Testers are encouraged to adjust which roles are allowed according to the accessibility support base line. For the purposes of executing test cases in all rules, it should be assumed that all roles are supported by assistive technologies so that none of the roles fail due to lack of accessibility support.

Accessibility Support for Explicit Semantic Role

Some browsers and assistive technologies treat the tokens of the role attribute as case-sensitive. Unless lowercase letters are used for the value of the role attribute, not all user agents will be able to interpret the tokens correctly. ARIA in HTML (working draft) also specifies that authors must use lowercase letters for the role and aria-* attributes.

Focusable

An element is focusable if one or both of the following are true:

Exception: Elements that lose focus during a period of up to 1 second after gaining focus, without the user interacting with the page the element is on, are not considered focusable.

Notes:

  • The 1 second time span is an arbitrary limit which is not included in WCAG. Given that scripts can manage the focus state of elements, testing the focusability of an element consistently would be impractical without a time limit.
  • The tabindex value of an element is the value of the tabindex attribute parsed using the rules for parsing integers. For the tabindex value to be different from null, it needs to be parsed without errors.

Implicit Semantic Role

The implicit semantic role of an element is a pre-defined value given by the host language which depends on the element and its ancestors.

Implicit roles for HTML and SVG, are documented in the HTML accessibility API mappings (working draft) and the SVG accessibility API mappings (working draft).

Accessibility Support for Implicit Semantic Role

  • Images with an empty alt attribute should have an implicit role of presentation, according to the HTML Accessibility API Mapping (work in progress). However, there are several popular browsers that do not treat images with empty alt attribute as having a role of presentation. Instead, they add the img element to the accessibility tree with a role of either img or graphic.

Included in the accessibility tree

Elements included in the accessibility tree of platform specific accessibility APIs are exposed to assistive technologies. This allows users of assistive technology to access the elements in a way that meets the requirements of the individual user.

The general rules for when elements are included in the accessibility tree are defined in the core accessibility API mappings. For native markup languages, such as HTML and SVG, additional rules for when elements are included in the accessibility tree can be found in the HTML accessibility API mappings (working draft) and the SVG accessibility API mappings (working draft).

For more details, see examples of included in the accessibility tree.

Programmatically hidden elements are removed from the accessibility tree. However, some browsers will leave focusable elements with an aria-hidden attribute set to true in the accessibility tree. Because they are hidden, these elements are considered not included in the accessibility tree. This may cause confusion for users of assistive technologies because they may still be able to interact with these focusable elements using sequential keyboard navigation, even though the element should not be included in the accessibility tree.

Marked as decorative

An element is marked as decorative if one or more of the following conditions is true:

  • it has an explicit role of none or presentation; or
  • it is an img element with an alt attribute whose value is the empty string (alt=""), and with no explicit role.

Elements are marked as decorative as a way to convey the intention of the author that they are pure decoration. It is different from the element actually being pure decoration as authors may make mistakes. It is different from the element being effectively ignored by assistive technologies as rules such as presentational roles conflict resolution may overwrite this intention.

Elements can also be ignored by assistive technologies if they are programmatically hidden. This is different from marking the element as decorative and does not convey the same intention. Notably, being programmatically hidden may change as users interact with the page (showing and hiding elements) while being marked as decorative should stay the same through all states of the page.

Outcome

An outcome is a conclusion that comes from evaluating an ACT Rule on a test subject or one of its constituent test target. An outcome can be one of the three following types:

  • Inapplicable: No part of the test subject matches the applicability
  • Passed: A test target meets all expectations
  • Failed: A test target does not meet all expectations

Note: A rule has one passed or failed outcome for every test target. When there are no test targets the rule has one inapplicable outcome. This means that each test subject will have one or more outcomes.

Note: Implementations using the EARL10-Schema can express the outcome with the outcome property. In addition to passed, failed and inapplicable, EARL 1.0 also defined an incomplete outcome. While this cannot be the outcome of an ACT Rule when applied in its entirety, it often happens that rules are only partially evaluated. For example, when applicability was automated, but the expectations have to be evaluated manually. Such "interim" results can be expressed with the incomplete outcome.

Programmatically Hidden

An HTML element is programmatically hidden if either it has a computed CSS property visibility whose value is not visible; or at least one of the following is true for any of its inclusive ancestors in the flat tree:

  • has a computed CSS property display of none; or
  • has an aria-hidden attribute set to true

Note: Contrary to the other conditions, the visibility CSS property may be reverted by descendants.

Note: The HTML standard suggests setting the CSS display property to none for elements with the hidden attribute. While not required by HTML, all modern browsers follow this suggestion. Because of this the hidden attribute is not used in this definition. In browsers that use this suggestion, overriding the CSS display property can reveal elements with the hidden attribute.

Semantic Role

The semantic role of an element is determined by the first of these cases that applies:

  1. Conflict If the element is marked as decorative, but the element is included in the accessibility tree; or would be included in the accessibility tree when it is not programmatically hidden, then its semantic role is its implicit role.
  2. Explicit If the element has an explicit role, then its semantic role is its explicit role.
  3. Implicit The semantic role of the element is its implicit role.

This definition can be used in expressions such as "semantic button" meaning any element with a semantic role of button.

Accessibility Support for Definition of Semantic Role for Semantic Role

  • There exist popular web browsers and assistive technologies which do not correctly implement Presentational Roles Conflict Resolution. These technologies will not include in the accessibility tree elements that should be, according to Specifications. Thus, some elements that should have their semantic role fixed by case Conflict above are instead falling into case Explicit and are hidden for users of assistive technologies.
  • A similar conflict exists for focusable elements with a aria-hidden="true" attribute. The WAI ARIA specification does not explain how to solve it. Some browsers give precedence to the element being focusable (and expose it in the accessibility tree) while some give precedence to the aria-hidden attribute (and hide the element).

Visible

Content perceivable through sight.

Content is considered visible if making it fully transparent would result in a difference in the pixels rendered for any part of the document that is currently within the viewport or can be brought into the viewport via scrolling.

Content is defined in WCAG.

For more details, see examples of visible.

Visual Context

The visual context of a node is everything that is visually or logically located near it when the document containing it is rendered. Only visible information may be part of the visual context.

The logical distance is the distance in the structure of the document: either the tree distance within the DOM tree, or the semantic relation. For example, headings are logically near the content that follows (until the next heading of the same or higher level) even though they might be far away visually or in the DOM tree.

The visual context may include, but is not limited to, headings, text in the same sentence or paragraph.

Note: As a rule of thumb, visual context should be close enough to be displayed on the device at the same time as the element it relates to. Because device sizes vary wildly and content can further be zoomed and moved around, this is however not a strong requirement.

Note: Visual context that is located before (in reading order) the element it relates to is often more useful than visual context located after. Indeed, it is easier for users to use context that they have already read than context that is yet to be read.

Useful Links

Implementations

This section is not part of the official rule. It is populated dynamically and not accounted for in the change history or the last modified date. This section will not be included in the rule when it is published on the W3C website.

No Implementations

Implementation reports are not provided for this rule.

Acknowledgments

Authors

Previous Authors

Funding

  • WAI-Tools
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