Help:
Understanding SC 3.3.5
3.3.5 Help: Context-sensitive help is available. (Level AAA)
Intent of this Success Criterion
The intent of this Success Criterion is to help users avoid making mistakes. Some users with disabilities may be more likely to make mistakes than users without disabilities. Using context-sensitive help, users find out how to perform an operation without losing track of what they are doing.
Context-sensitive help only needs to be provided when the label is not sufficient to describe all functionality. The existence of context-sensitive help should be obvious to the user and they should be able to obtain it whenever they require it.
The content author may provide the help text, or the user agent may provide the help text based on technology-specific, programmatically determined information.
Specific Benefits of Success Criterion 3.3.5:
Assistance for text input helps individuals with writing disabilities and people with reading and intellectual disabilities who often have difficulty writing text in forms or other places that need text input.
Additionally, these kinds of assistance help people who are aging and have the same difficulty in text input and/or mouse operation.
Examples of Success Criterion 3.3.5
on-line job application
Some of the questions may be hard for new job seekers to understand. A help link next to each question provides instructions and explanations for each question.
Related Resources
Resources are for information purposes only, no endorsement implied.
(none currently documented)
Techniques and Failures for Success Criterion 3.3.5 - Help
Each numbered item in this section represents a technique or combination of techniques that the WCAG Working Group deems sufficient for meeting this Success Criterion. The techniques listed only satisfy the Success Criterion if all of the WCAG 2.0 conformance requirements have been met.
Sufficient Techniques
Instructions: Select the situation below that matches your content. Each situation includes techniques or combinations of techniques that are known and documented to be sufficient for that situation.
Situation A: If a form requires text input:
Using scripts to provide context-sensitive bubble help (future link)
Providing help by an assistant in the Web page (future link)
Providing spell checking and suggestions for text input if applicable to the language (future link)
Using the title attribute to provide context-sensitive help
Providing instructions at the top of a form (future link)
Additional Techniques (Advisory) for 3.3.5
Although not required for conformance, the following additional techniques should be considered in order to make content more accessible. Not all techniques can be used or would be effective in all situations.
Checking byte of character and auto-converting to expected byte for text input if applicable (future link)
Common Failures for SC 3.3.5
The following are common mistakes that are considered failures of Success Criterion 3.3.5 by the WCAG Working Group.
(No failures currently documented)