Help (3.3.5 – Level AAA)

Provide help to users.

Introduction

While many guidelines cover highlighting mistakes and remedying them, it’s useful to help users avoid making errors in the first place. Users with disabilities, such as impairments with reading, focus or understanding, are more likely to make mistakes than others.

Where a label or control isn’t as clear as it can be, adding contextual assistance can prevent users from making errors.

How to Pass ‘Help’

Provide contextual assistance whenever part of a website may be hard to understand.

‘Help’ Tips

For a form, it can be useful to provide links to contextual assistance about certain fields. For example, why the question is being asking and the type of response expected.

Where a form field has a required input type or format, explain this.

Help can be by tooltip, a link to a new page or simply a good explanation near the element you’re providing help for.

See Also

• Error Identification
• Labels or Instructions
• Error Suggestion
• Error Prevention (Legal, Financial, Data)
• Error Prevention (All)
• Understanding Success Criterion 3.2.5 (W3C)