Add autocomplete attributes to personal data fields
Fields that ask about the person filling them in need an autocomplete attribute from HTML's fixed list of tokens. name, email, tel, street-address and the rest. W3C lists H98 as sufficient for 1.3.5 Identify Input Purpose on its own, at Level AA. Autofill is the part people notice, and the reason the rule exists is bigger than that. A declared purpose lets other software rewrite the field for the person using it, swapping in a label they already know or putting a telephone icon beside a field tagged tel. That is help you cannot give somebody through a visible label alone. The scope is a closed list. The rule covers the input purposes WCAG enumerates, so a field outside that list is outside the rule, and the token does its job whatever language the visible label is written in.
How we find it in an audit
Personal-data fields with no autocomplete, and invalid values like autocomplete=true, are quick automated finds. The judgment is whether the token matches the field. A wrong token autofills the wrong value into a field somebody then submits without checking, which is worse than carrying no token at all.
How affected users experience it
The people this serves most directly have cognitive and motor disabilities. Autofill turns a 12-field checkout into a couple of confirmations, and nobody has to hold a card number in their head or type it accurately. Readers with memory impairments, dyslexia or tremors lose the most when every field demands manual entry, and the rule exists because typing your own address perfectly, every time, is harder than it sounds.
Passes vs. fails
Passes
<input type="email" id="email" name="contact_e" autocomplete="email">Fails
<input type="text" id="email" name="contact_e">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
Other ways to satisfy this rule
2 guides on this site are filed under 1.3.5 Identify Input Purpose. 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 H98: Using HTML autocomplete attributes. 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.