Wizard Accessibility Audit: Step Three of What?

What We Keep Finding

Multi-step flows raise the stakes on every failure. The step changes and announces nothing, so "step 3 of 5" is knowledge for sighted users only. Back means data loss, sometimes silently. Validation waits until the final submit, then delivers all its bad news at once, pointing at fields three screens ago.

The rule that bites hardest here is one of the newest, and it is Level A. Information a flow already collected cannot simply be demanded again. It has to be filled in or offered for selection. There are three exceptions. Re-entry is allowed where it is essential, where security requires it, or where the earlier answer has stopped being valid, and a password confirmation field lives comfortably in the second of those. Here is the trap, though. A tester who checks whether the browser autofills the field and calls it a pass has tested the wrong thing, because W3C says explicitly that browser autofill does not satisfy this. The site has to supply the answer.

And a claim wizard or a configuration wizard engages a Level AA rule almost nobody names. Where a flow makes a legal commitment, takes money, or modifies data somebody controls, the standard wants one of three things. Reversible, checked for errors with a chance to correct, or a review-and-confirm step before it finalizes. That last route is the standard answer to a multi-step flow, and it is the thing a wizard audit should lead with rather than end on.

One architecture question decides half the findings, so we ask it first. If each step is its own address, the page change carries the news and the announcement rule does not apply. If the steps swap in place, it does, and "step 3 of 5" needs a live region that reads the whole message rather than the changed number. Same flow, different obligations, and a report that does not ask gets it wrong in one direction or the other.