Provide an accessible help assistant on the page
G193 is more specific than its usual paraphrase. W3C describes an assistant embedded in the page, a multimedia avatar that helps the reader understand and complete the content, rather than a static help panel or a tooltip. That distinction changes what counts. A text panel explaining each field is good practice and it is a different technique. The obligation attached to this one is where teams get caught. W3C requires the avatar itself to meet the relevant criteria under the media guideline, so an accessibility help feature delivered as an uncaptioned, undescribed video fails on its own terms. W3C lists G193 as sufficient for the Level AAA help criterion, and at Level AA for status messages when it is paired with the technique that announces them. Its own test is thin, checking only that the assistant exists and that it helps.
How we find it in an audit
Our reviewers look for what the technique actually describes and then audit it as media. Captions, audio description, a text alternative, keyboard operation, and a way to dismiss it. Where a site offers a written help panel instead, we assess it against the technique it really matches rather than this one, because calling it G193 does not make it G193.
How affected users experience it
An assistant is meant to be the thing that rescues somebody stuck on a hard form. When it speaks and never writes, it rescues one group and abandons another, so a Deaf user meets a helper they cannot hear and a blind user meets a video they cannot see. Getting the media obligations right is not a technicality here. It decides whether the help feature helps the people most likely to need it.
Passes vs. fails
Passes
Every page of the form offers a captioned, keyboard-operable help assistant in the same position, explaining each requested value with a worked example.
Fails
A tax form full of jargon whose only support is a phone number on a separate contact page, linked from the footer on some pages and the header on others.
Other ways to satisfy this rule
6 guides on this site are filed under 3.3.5 Help. W3C lists this one as sufficient for that rule on its own. Implement it correctly, in a way your readers' software actually supports, and the rule is met.
This guide is our interpretation of W3C technique G193: Providing help by an assistant in the web page. 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.