Hi everyone. Josh here with Online ADA. In this video, we’re covering article 3.3.3–Error Suggestion. This is a AA level requirement, and I’ll jump into the description.
“If an input error is automatically detected and suggestions for correction are known, then the suggestions are provided to the user, unless it would jeopardize the security or purpose of the content.”
This is a very important guideline for a number of reasons. Some of those are people with learning disabilities or cognitive disabilities can more easily fill out forms and they don’t have to guess at what the contents need to be or what the format needs to be for them. People who are blind or have vision impairment don’t have to guess at what the error is, and they can more easily identify the nature of the input error. And then people with motion impairment can reduce the number of times that they have to re-enter the input. Uh, the core of this article is basically saying that we want to identify what the error is, based on the last criterion, and then not just saying, “hey, you’ve got an error on this form somewhere–please review the form,” you wanna suggest what’s wrong.
For instance, if a form input is required, then you can say “the first name field requires an input” or “please enter something in the month input.” The documentation itself actually has a really good example that I’ll read through here for you as well. Um, this is suggestions from a limited set of values. An input field requires that a “month name” can be entered. If the user enters “12,” suggestions for correction may include a list of acceptable values, e.g.: “Choose one of: January, February, March, and so on.” A description of the set of values, e.g.: “Please provide a name of the month.” Or, a conversion of the input data interpreted as a different month format, as in– “Did you mean December?”
Those are all great suggestions for how we could fix this input, because something is wrong. We wanna just get the user to success as quickly as possible. So, using something like this technique, where we’re either interpreting what they’ve entered and trying to come up with a different–a better solution for them based on that input, or we expect a very specific type of input. We put those expectations out there in the input. Uh, “Did you mean December?” or “Choose from one of these: January, February, December…” So on and so forth. These are great examples. We’re just informing the user that there’s something wrong, and here’s what we think is the problem–give that a try.
Um, that’s all there is. This is to help those folks with learning and cognitive disabilities, motion impairment, and low vision. We’re–we’re helping them get to where they wanna be and helping them achieve success when using our sites as quickly as possible. Helping out in any way we can.
So, thanks for joining me in this article and we’ll see you in the next one.