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In the Native Widgets and Custom Widgets section of Accessibility Insights for Web, the assisted test highlights widgets on the webpage being tested.

In the "How to test" section of the "Cues" section for Native Widgets and Custom Widgets , the tester is guided to interact with the highlighted widgets to determine whether it adopts any of these states: Disabled, Read-only, Required.

However, even though WCAG 2.1 SC 3.3.2 Labels or Instructions explicitly states that inputs have labels, including clear indication of required fields, the "How to test" section does not include verification that those Required fields have a visible indicator. It only directs the tester to "inspect its HTML to verify that the states are appropriately coded.

Thus, a required field could be one that exposes its required state to a screen reader but doesn't have a visible indicator that it's required.

Shouldn't AI for Web include a test for a visible indicator for fields that are required?

Cat Ailanjian
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Thank you for the suggestion! I work on Accessibility Insights, and I've created a feature request in our github repo for this. Our team will take a look and decide what should be done, and will update this question once we address it.

UPDATE: We believe that failure to visibly indicate required fields is not a violation of this (or any) SC. Neither the 3.3.2 SC itself nor the Intent section of the Understanding document explicitly mentions it, nor is there a documented Failure example for it. (It does appear in the Examples and Sufficient Techniques, but those don't constitute requirements.) I believe the need to communicate required fields is addressed by Errors > Error identification.

Kelsey Pownell
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  • Thank you for your research. I also checked the w3.org WAI Discussion List and found a discussion on this very topic from 2019. The participants in the discussion were split in their opinions, but the ones who agreed with you gave the same evidence for their position. – Cat Ailanjian Nov 18 '20 at 21:46
  • However, I wish you would consider adding it as a "best practice" since it does appear in the Examples and Sufficient Techniques. And, as one person wrote in the WAI discussion, "We all need to remember one thing. This is all about communication. If you are not communicating a website to those with various disabilities it is not accessible no matter how technical it is conforming to normative guidelines or other methods." – Cat Ailanjian Nov 18 '20 at 21:47