WCAG 2.2 · Guideline 3.3 · Understandable
Input Assistance
Forms have to help people avoid mistakes and recover from the ones they make.
Everybody has met this one and almost nobody knows it has a name. You fill in a long form, get a single field wrong, submit, and the page comes back with the whole thing wiped. Since October 2023 that has been a Level A failure, because 3.3.7 Redundant Entry says information you already gave has to come back filled in rather than be asked for twice. It is the newest rule under this guideline and the easiest one to show somebody on their own site.
Six A/AA success criteria live here, out of nine, and WCAG 2.2 added three of them. Two of the three land inside an ordinary audit, 3.3.7 at Level A and 3.3.8 Accessible Authentication at Level AA. That second one is narrower than its reputation. It does not ban image puzzles at Level AA. Picking objects out of pictures is one of four things a login step may offer instead, and only Level AAA takes that escape away. What no tool will tell you is whether any of this passes. Eight of the nine criteria here have no automated test rule at all, and the ninth has one that is still only proposed. That makes guideline 3.3 the largest body of work in the standard a scanner cannot reach. The guideline is the goal. The six rules are what gets marked.
- Rules
- 6
- Level A
- 3
- Level AA
- 3
- Human testing only
- 3
All 6 Input Assistance rules
- 3.3.1Level AError IdentificationWhen a form rejects something, the page has to say which field is wrong and what is wrong with it, in text.Partly scannable13 fixes
- 3.3.2Level ALabels or InstructionsEvery field that takes input needs a label or an instruction, and the rule means every field rather than only the required ones.Partly scannable17 fixes
- 3.3.3Level AAError SuggestionWhen your code knows what would fix an error, it has to say so.Human testing9 fixes
- 3.3.4Level AAError Prevention (Legal, Financial, Data)Some pages do things that cannot be taken back, and this rule says at least one safeguard has to stand in front of them.Human testing7 fixes
- 3.3.7Level ANew in 2.2Redundant EntryNew in WCAG 2.2, and it says you cannot make somebody type the same thing twice inside one process.Human testing1 fixes
- 3.3.8Level AANew in 2.2Accessible Authentication (Minimum)New in WCAG 2.2.Partly scannable3 fixes
Level AAA in this guideline
3 enhanced criteria sit under 3.3. They are outside the level almost every law names, so our audits treat them as reference rather than scope. Some are still worth adopting, and the Level AAA hub says which.
- 3.3.5Level AAAHelpContext-sensitive help has to be available.Not graded6 fixes
- 3.3.6Level AAAError Prevention (All)Where a page asks the reader to submit information, one of three things has to be true.Not graded
- 3.3.9Level AAANew in 2.2Accessible Authentication (Enhanced)A login step cannot require a cognitive function test unless that step offers either another authentication method that is not one, or a mechanism that helps the reader through it.Not graded3 fixes
What goes wrong here
These are the failures we find repeatedly under 3.3, across sites of every size.
- An error shows as a red border and nothing else. The rule wants text. It has to identify which field is wrong and describe what is wrong with it.
- The error text names a rule instead of a fix. "Invalid input" is the clear failure; "field required" can be adequate where the reader can see which field it belongs to, so judge whether it actually tells somebody what to do.
- The form has no visible label, only placeholder text that disappears the moment typing starts. Labels or instructions is the requirement, and a placeholder alone is neither.
- Information the reader already gave is demanded again in the same process. Filling it in for them is one answer and offering it for selection is another, and there are exceptions where re-entry is essential, needed for security, or the earlier answer is no longer valid.
- Sign-in rests on memory or transcription with none of the four escapes the rule allows at AA. Recognising common objects is one of those escapes, so an object-recognition challenge is not a failure at this level.
Who it affects
- People with cognitive disabilities, for whom an unexplained error ends the task rather than delaying it.
- People with dyslexia and related differences, who meet the sharpest version of a memory or transcription test at sign-in.
- Screen reader users, who need the error to exist as real text they can find, and separately need to be told it appeared.
- Anyone filling a long form, where a failed submission that discards the work is how a checkout loses a customer.
How to work through it
- 1Submit every form wrong on purpose, several different ways, until you have triggered each error condition rather than the first one.
- 2Check each error identifies the field and describes what is wrong. Then check separately whether it suggests a correction, which is the AA rule and only applies where the correction is known and revealing it would not defeat the purpose or the security of the form.
- 3Confirm the error exists as text before asking whether it was announced. Those are two different criteria, and the announcement half only applies where the message qualifies as a status message and no change of context carried it.
- 4Walk sign-in and password recovery looking for anything that asks somebody to recall or transcribe. Then check the four AA escapes: an alternative method, a mechanism to help, object recognition, or identifying non-text content the user provided.
- 5Test recovery by submitting wrong, correcting, and confirming the form kept the rest of the work.
How the levels build
Level A holds three and covers the basics: errors are identified in text, inputs have labels or instructions, and information already entered in a process is not demanded again. That last one is new in WCAG 2.2. Level AA holds three more. Errors come with a suggested correction where one is known, submissions that carry weight are reversible or checkable or confirmable, and authentication does not depend on a cognitive function test. Those weighty submissions are four defined kinds: legal commitments, financial transactions, changes to data the user controls, and test responses. Level AAA holds three. Error prevention extends to every submission, help is available in context, and the authentication rule loses the object-recognition and personal-content escapes, though an alternative method or a mechanism to help still satisfies it.
Other Understandable guidelines
- 3.1ReadableThe page has to say what language it is in, and mark where that changes.
- 3.2PredictableThe interface has to behave the same way twice, and never change on its own.
Part of the Understandable principle · browse by level: Level A · Level AA · or the full 55-rule library.
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