Do not invent autocomplete attribute values
The field carries an autocomplete attribute and the value is made up, or it is real and belongs on a different field. F107 is the failure technique for that, and a match is a defect rather than a technique. Two boundaries decide whether it applies at all. The rule reaches only fields collecting information about the person filling the form, so a shipping address for somebody else's gift is outside it. And the token list is not the one in the living HTML specification. WCAG keeps its own fixed list, frozen against an older version of HTML, so a token a browser happily accepts today can still be wrong here. There is a second way to pass as well. Where the technology carries the input's purpose programmatically by some other route, autocomplete is the documented mechanism rather than the only one.
How we find it in an audit
Pulling every autocomplete value off the audited pages is mechanical, and comparing them against WCAG's own token list is mechanical too, so the first pass takes seconds. Then a reviewer does the part no tool can. Deciding whether each field collects the user's own information, and whether the token sitting on it describes what the field is really asking for. A valid token on the wrong field clears every validator and fails here, and it is the more common of the two shapes.
How affected users experience it
This one pays out to people who will never see the attribute. Someone with a motor disability fills a long form by autofill because typing an address costs them real effort. Someone with a cognitive disability leans on the browser remembering a postcode they would otherwise have to go and look up. Some assistive technology also reads the token to swap a written label for an icon its user recognizes. A wrong token puts an email address in the name box. A made-up one does nothing at all, quietly.
Passes vs. fails
Passes
<input name="phone" autocomplete="tel">Fails
<input name="phone" autocomplete="telephone">How this gets tested
The W3C publishes test rules that define what a checker looks for here.
- Autocomplete attribute has valid valueA tool can check this
The other techniques filed under this rule
2 guides on this site are filed under 1.3.5 Identify Input Purpose. W3C documents this one as a failure of that rule, so it describes a way the rule gets broken rather than a way to pass it.
This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique F107: Failure of Success Criterion 1.3.5 due to incorrect autocomplete attribute values. W3C publishes its techniques as guidance rather than as the standard, and says so on every one of them. The success criterion is what conformance is measured against, and a technique is one documented way to meet it.