IU Locations: About: Indiana University

Academics: Indiana University

Life at IU Online: Life at IU: Indiana University

Life at IU Kokomo: Life at IU: Indiana University

Make an Impact: Indiana University

About: Indiana University

Life at IU East: Life at IU: Indiana University

Life at IUPUI: Life at IU: Indiana University

Life at IU: Indiana University

Never miss a beat in business: About: Indiana University

Forms should always contain a submit button, otherwise some people using
accessible technologies may not be able to submit the form.

Submit buttons are `<input>` elements with a type attribute of `submit` or
`image`, or `<button>` elements with type `submit`.

## Rationale 

Many users expect to be able to press enter in a form to submit it. However,
this is not always possible.

Users of some assistive technologies may (depending on the technology) only
be able to press a button to submit the form. In the absence of a submit
button, the user may not be able to submit the form.

In addition, the absence of a submit button suggests that the form may 
provide an automatic 'change of context', i.e. major change to the user 
interface without the user choosing to do so. This can be highly disorientating
to some users.

## Methodology

* All `<form>` elements on the page are tested separately.
* Check whether the <form> contains any of the following elements, and that the elements are visible
  when the page first loads:
  * `<input>`
  * `<textarea>`
  * `<checkbox>`
  * `<select>`
  * `<button>`
* If the form contains any of the above elements, then it is considered to
  need a submit button. If a submit button is missing, then a failure is reported.

### Field visibility check

The check for field visibility (above) is designed to ignore forms which perform functions not normally
associated with user interaction, such as tracking code, or ASPX forms which wrap every page 
but which don't contain any interactive elements. These are common potential false positives.

A trade-off here is that some forms may be invisible when a page loads, and later revealed to
a user following some interaction. If these are missing a submit button, Silktide will not detect them.
In practice, this false negative is far less likely than the false positive this prevents. 

## Further reading

* [WCAG 3.2.2 - On Input](https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/on-input.html)
* [Technique H32](https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H32.html)

form-submit-required

January 2026

December 2025

Indiana University

Title / URL	Issues
IU Locations: About: Indiana Universitywww.iu.edu/about/locations.html	1
Academics: Indiana Universitywww.iu.edu/academics/	1
Life at IU Online: Life at IU: Indiana Universitywww.iu.edu/life-at-iu/online.html	1
Life at IU Kokomo: Life at IU: Indiana Universitywww.iu.edu/life-at-iu/kokomo.html	1
Make an Impact: Indiana Universitywww.iu.edu/impact/index.html	1
About: Indiana Universitywww.iu.edu/about/index.html	1
Life at IU East: Life at IU: Indiana Universitywww.iu.edu/life-at-iu/east.html	1
Life at IUPUI: Life at IU: Indiana Universitywww.iu.edu/life-at-iu/iupui.html	1
Life at IU: Indiana Universitywww.iu.edu/life-at-iu/	1
Never miss a beat in business: About: Indiana Universitywww.iu.edu/about/business.html	1

Add a submit button to all forms

Indiana University

Where this issue has occurred