What is Accessibility?
Accessibility ensures users with disabilities and users who depend on assistive devices, such as screen readers and Braille displays, can interact with your form. Formsite forms can support Section 508 and WCAG 1.0 (Level AA) accessibility standards. These are the base standards that are a requirement for government and related websites.
Formsite forms have accessibility built into form items and features wherever possible, but some cases need special attention to make sure content doesn't go beyond what accessibility can support.
Accessibility Guidelines
Due to the nature of accessibility, your forms must be planned and built with accessibility in mind.
General guidelines:
- Use descriptive labels for all form items. Only the text inside an item's label (and its choice labels, for multiple choice item types) will be understood by screen readers as associated with that item.
- Do not use color alone to highlight important information. Colors should have sufficient contrast. Some people can't see certain colors or distinguish colors that are too similar.
- Do not use animated images that flash or flicker. Flashing or flickering at between 2 and 55 cycles per second can trigger optically-induced seizures.
- Set alternate text for all Image items. This should be a description of the image for people who are unable to see images.
- Ensure any custom HTML you add to your form is fully valid. Invalid HTML can confuse screen readers and accessibility software.
Full detailed guidelines can be found at Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, §1194.22 and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.
Non-accessible Features
Some form items aren't able to work in a fully accessible way. For example, a Signature item requires form users to visually draw a signature and there's not a way to draw in a non-visual way.
These item types aren't fully accessible, don't use them if you require full accessibility:
- Date
- Image List
- Image List Pricing
- Multi Scale
- Short Answer List
- Signature
- Star Matrix