Business Website Success Tip: Ensure Your Online Forms Work!

Business Website Success Tip: Ensure Your Online Forms Work!

One of the most critical components of a business website's success is that its online forms work as intended. Obviously, potential customers who would want to order items or services must be provided the means to submit personal details and select options about their orders. However, some inexperienced company owners may not realize that a form must be functional for more than just the customers who can see it; users with impairments must be accommodated as well. Each individual input field on a given form needs to be provided a label within the source code so that users who rely on programs that vocally recite the contents of web pages to them will know when they are supposed to type in certain pieces of personal information.
A very basic way to accommodate blind users would be to simply have each input field on a form preceded by a printed word that is enclosed in a "label" tag. However, this is insufficient by modern web design standards because the field is still detached from the word identifying it. A given label and the field it is supposed to represent can be positioned to appear more directly associated with each other by simply placing the input syntax within the same label tag as the identifying word. This is usually not the best procedure because it can inhibit opportunities for aesthetic styling, so normally the label and field are directly associated with each other using properties. The input field must be granted an "id" property occupied by a unique name, and the label field must be given a property called "for" that references the exact name of the field's "id" property.
Proper label association is one of several necessary criteria for a website to fulfill if its forms are to be considered professional. A related necessity is the assurance that any user is physically able to navigate and fill out a form with just their keyboard. Blind users are among those who are not able to use computer mice to home in on an input field that happens to be displayed on-screen. For more information click here https://blog.kentcdodds.com/please-stop-building-inaccessible-forms-and-how-to-fix-them-72c59e2729c6.

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