Context-sensitive help
Silktide finds forms on your pages and asks you to confirm that help is available where visitors might need it - either for the page as a whole or for individual fields. Context-sensitive help explains how to complete a field at the point where the visitor is filling it in.
Why this matters
A form is easy for the person who built it and a puzzle for everyone else. What format should the date be in? Which reference number is being asked for? People with cognitive or learning disabilities are especially likely to get stuck, and help that lives on a separate page forces them to abandon the form
- and their place in it - to find out.
Help offered next to the field lets people answer the question without losing track of what they were doing, and prevents mistakes rather than reporting them afterwards.
How to fix it
This check asks you to review each form and decide where help is needed. There is no single required approach; common options are:
- Explain the expected format in the field's label or a hint below it:
<!-- Format explained where the visitor needs it -->
<label for="date">Date (dd/mm/yyyy)</label>
<input type="text" id="date" name="date">
- Add a help icon or expandable hint next to complex fields.
- Link to detailed instructions or offer live assistance for the page as a whole.
Connect hints to their fields in code, for example with the
aria-describedby attribute, so
users hear them too.
Simple fields that need no explanation, such as "Email address" on a contact form, do not require help. If a flagged form is self-explanatory, the finding.
How Silktide tests this
- Find every form on each page.
- Skip forms with no fields a visitor can actually use (hidden or non-interactive forms), and any elements you have excluded from checking.
- Flag each remaining form for your review. Whether the available help is sufficient is a judgment Silktide cannot make automatically, so a human decides.